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KCojKloWOOiLOAKi] LEa(SDJ\[D)^Tr(o}[f:!l[E,Kfl,[R 



William Ewart Gladstone. 



BY 



J. L. M. CURRY, LL.D., 

n 

Author of "Constitutional Government in Spain." 



RICHMOND : 

B. F. JOHNSON & CO., PUBLISHERS, 

1891. 



<<^v 






d- 



Entered according to Act of Congress, In the year 1891, by J. L. M. 

CURRY, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at 

Washington, D. C. 



on 28 y9\i- 



TO THE 
I DEDICATE 

THIS LITTLE BOOK 

AS A MARK OF ADMIRATION FOR HIS PERSONAL VIRTUES, 

FOR HIS DISTINGUISHED AND BENEFICIAL SERVICES 

IN SO MANY POSITIONS, AND IN GRATITUDE FOR 

HIS HELPFUL CONFIDENCE AND FRIENDSHIP. 



rsi 



PREFACE. 



In the preparation of this vohime I have 
sought to gather material from many authen- 
tic sources, but I must gratefully acknowledge 
my special indebtedness to the Life of Glad- 
stone by George Barnett Smith. Facts and 
language I have liberally borrowed, and with^ 
out burdening my pages with frequent cita- 
tions I prefer to refer to the book as the most 
complete and valuable account of the life of 
Mr. Gladstone, up to 1883, that has come to 
my knowledge. 

Mr. Gladstone's speeches and writings have 
been used freely as furnishing the most accu- 
rate data and the most trustworthy statement 
of his opinions, purposes, and motives. In- 
stead of paraphrase or abridgement, it has 
seemed to me best to let him, very often, 
speak for himself. 

As this book is a study rather than a biog- 
raphy, I have not observed a chronological 
order, nor have I sought to disguise my ad- 
miration for the subject, my sympathy gene- 

[5] 



6 Preface, 

rally Avith the Liberal party, nor my leanings 
on economic questions which bear on the 
proper policy of our government. 

Because of our close relationship with 
Great Britain, and of the common duties and 
responsibilities of the two governments and 
peoples, I venture to hope that this sketch 
may not be unprofitable to thoughtful Ameri- 
can readers, and that whatever influence it 
may exert will tend to strengthen the bonds 
of confidence and affection betv/een the two 
great English-speaking nations. 



Prime Ministers, 1834—1890. 



Sir Robert Peel, . 
Lord Melbourne, 
Sir Robert Peel, . 
Lord John Russell, 
Lord Derbj, . . 
Earl of Aberdeen, 
Lord Palmerstpn, 
Lord Derbj, . . 
Lord Palmerston, 
Lord John Russell, 
Lord Derby, . . 
B. Disraeli, . . 
W. E. Gladstone, 
Earl Beaconsfield, 
Gladstone, . . . 
Earl Iddesleigh, . 
Gladstone, . . . 
Lord Salisbury, . 



Dec. 26, 1834 — April i8, 1835. 
April 18, 1835— Sept. 6, 1841. 
Sept. 6, 1841— July 6, 1846. 
July 6, 1846 — Feb. 21, 1852. 
Feb. 27, 1852 — Dec. 17, 1852. 
Dec. 28, 1852— Jan. 30, 1855. 
Feb. 3, 1855— Feb. 20, 1858. 
Feb. 25, 1858 — June 11, 1859. 
June 18, 1859— Oct. 18, 1865. 
Nov. 6, 1865 — June 26, 1866. 
July 6, 1866— Feb. 25, 1868. 
Feb. 29, 1868— Dec. 2, 1868. 
Dec. 9, 1868— Feb. 17, 1874. 
Feb. 21, 1874— April 21, 1880. 
April 28, 1880 — June 9, 1885. 
June 24, 1885— Feb., 1886. 
Feb., 1886— June, 1886. 
August, 1886. 



In Sir Robert Peel's first ministry, Mr. Gladstone was 
Under-Secretary for the Colonies ; in his second minis- 
try, Mr. Gladstone was, for a part of the time, President 
of the Board of Trade. 

In Aberdeen's, Palmerston's, Russell's second, and his 
own first and second ministries, Mr. Gladstone was Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer. For a portion of the time of 
his first and second ministries he devolved the office of 
Chancellor of the Exchequer on Sir Robert Lowe and 
Mr. Childers. 



['J 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter. Page. 

I. Birth and Early Environments ... 9 

II. Early Parliamentary Life — Reform 
Bill of 1832 — Corn Laws — Navigation 
Laws — Neapolitan Controversy . . 16 

III. Transition Period — Change of Opin- 

ions AND Parties — Disestablishment 
OF Irish Church — Recognition of Con- 
federacy . 36 

IV. Character of the English Govern- 

ment — The Constitution — The: Cabi- 
net — The Prime Minister 62 

V. Chancellor of the Exchequer — Finan- 
cial Policy 84 

VI. Statesmanship — Paper Duty — Pur- 
chase OF Commissions in the Army . . 106 
VII. Franchise Bill — Distribution — Other 

Electoral Reforms n6 

VIII. Foreign Affairs 133 

IX. The House of Lords 140 

X. The Irish Question — Land Tenure — 

Home Rule , 1^6 

XI. Authorship — Homeric Writings — The 

Vatican Decrees 183 

XII. Character, Conduct, and Opinions as 

Related to Religion and the Church . 191 

XIII. Gladstone and the United States . . 213 

XIV. Personal Characteristics 224 

[8] 



William Ewart Gladstone. 



CHAPTER I. 



The roll of English-speaking states- 
men bears no name more illustrious than 
that of William Ewart Gladstone. 
No other civilian in this century has 
awakened such popular enthusiasm, has 
commanded such zealous following, has 
been identified with so many and such 
great measures. During this century 
Great Britain has undergone marvelous 
changes in overthrow of abuses, in re- 
moval or modification of vested rights, 
in enlargement of popular liberties. 
Progress in material growth, in inven- 
tions, in science, in discovery, in relig- 
ious activities, in civil and religious 
freedom, in humanitarian reform, in 
international ethics, in the science of 
politics, has been very striking. There 
have been struggles, on which were 



10 William Ewart Gladstone. 

staked vital interests of the hnman race, 
the result of which has shown a percep- 
tible advance toward popular freedom 
and human equality. In the last sixty 
years the statute books of England are 
luminous with laws which illustrate 
growth and liberty, and which, recited 
by their titles, make a monument more 
lasting than brass. The slave-trade has 
been abolished and slaves have been 
peaceably emancipated in the West 
Indies; Corporation and Test acts have 
been repealed and the universities liber- 
alized; Roman Catholics and Jews have 
been relieved of civil disabilities; the 
criminal code has been humanized, 
death penalties have been restricted and 
the light of day has been let in upon 
prisons; three Reform bills have been 
carried extending the franchise and 
equalizing representation; the monopoly 
of the East India Company has been 
overthrown, and municipal corporations 
reformed; chancery and common-law 
courts have been made accessible to 
suitors, poor laws improved, game laws 



Birth and Early Environments. 11 

modified; the Corn laws liave been re- 
pealed, removing the tax from the na- 
tion's bread; liberal commercial treaties 
have been negotiated ; the post-office has 
been made subservient to all who can 
raise a penny for a letter, or a shilling 
for the savings bank; a system of public 
education has been established, and the 
administration of the government is be- 
ing gradually brought into more perfect 
harmony with popular representation. 
Events, revolutions, epochs, great move- 
ments in thought and action, are usually 
represented by individual men. For sixty 
years Gladstone has been a prominent 
actor in English politics. For near forty 
years his history has been the history of 
the Houso of Commons, almost of the 
government of Great Britain. 

He was born in Liverpool on the 29th of 
December, 1809, and sprang from honor- 
able parentage of that middle class which 
by foresight, pluck, honesty and energy, 
has contributed so much to England's re- 
nown and prosperity. In 1865 he said, 
"the blood which runs in my veins is 



12 William Ewart Gladstone. 

exclusively Scottish." From father and 
mother he inherited the moral and intel- 
lectual traits which he has exhibited 
through life, his political and ecclesiasti- 
cal bias and affiliations; and they were 
fortunately able to give him that contin- 
uous training which made it possible for 
him to begin his life work, undistracted 
by business cares and occupations, and 
with powers and faculties so developed 
and improved that he needed no long 
apprenticeship to mature and qualify for 
legislative usefulness and influential po- 
sition . 

Eton College, which he entered in 1821 
and left in 1827, was cramped by that 
conservative system of education and dis- 
cipline which so long kept higher insti- 
tutions enslaved by a narrow mediaeval 
curriculum. In 1831 he matriculated in 
Christ Church, Oxford, ^' the most aristo- 
cratic of the colleges," where he attained 
the highest honors of the university, 
graduating double first. His university 
life attached him more strongly to con- 
servatism in politics and religion, and re- 



Birth and Early Environments. 13 

tarded his emergence from Tory and 
High Church exclusivism to clearer and 
healthier Liberalism. Oxford, which 
Morley characterizes as 'Hhat famous 
home of so many bad causes/' has been 
pre-eminent in resisting educational, po- 
litical and ecclesiastical reform, and has 
magnified the royal prerogative, preached 
passive obedience, and sentenced to the 
flames the works of modern constitution- 
alists. " The atmosphere of Oxford was 
unfavorable to liberty and gave bias to 
intolerance and bigotry." 

On the day of RusselFs execution, Ox- 
ford, in full convocation, passed a decree, 
promulgating, on pain of infamy here 
and damnation hereafter, the doctrines 
of divine right and passive obedience, 
and anathematizing twenty-seven propo- 
sitions from Milton, Baxter, Godwin, Bel- 
larmine, Buchanan, andHobbes, as sedi- 
tious, scandalous, impious, blasphemous, 
heretical and damnable. Macaulay, in 
the Edinburgh Review, in 1835, said, '^the 
glory of being farther behind the age than 
any other class of British people is one 



14 William Ewart Gladstone, 

which the University of Oxford acquired 
early and has never lost/' 

In 1878, Gladstone made this confes- 
sion : '' I trace in the education of Oxford 
of my own time one great defect. Per- 
haps, it was my own fault ; hut I must 
admit that I did not learn, when at Ox- 
ford, that which I have learned since, 
viz., to set a due value on the imperisha- 
hle and inestimable principles of human 
libert}^ The temper, which, I think, pre- 
vailed too much in academic circles, was 
that liberty was regarded with jealousy, 
and fear could not be wholly dispensed 
with/' Such forebodings and fears, dis- 
trust of the people, adherence to prescrip- 
tion, slavery to usage and prejudice, long 
fettered his intellect and opinions, not- 
withstanding his varied scholarship, the 
solidity of his understanding and his 
innate love of investigation. Because of 
home and academic training the young 
man found his intimate associates, and 
party affiliations among Tories and High 
Churchmen. His father being the most 
rigid of Tories, home, school and church 



Birth and Early Environments. 15 

tended to keep the son under the sway 
of tradition and authority. Thus, home 
life, social forces, personal friendships, 
the potencies of college influence, com- 
bined to put the early career on the trend 
directly adverse to what manhood and old 
age have wrought. On the other hand, 
the father's strength of will, business in- 
tegrity, large experience, honorable ac- 
quaintanceship, commercial connections, 
the mother's gentleness, conscientious- 
ness and susceptibility to impressions, 
the scholarlv tastes and love of letters 
with which his mind had been early im- 
bued, the refined and cultured society 
of the university, the early practice of 
composition and of debate, the habit of 
observation and widening of sympathies 
and of intelligence produced by travel, 
combined to fit him, in an unusual de- 
gree, for his subsequent life. 



CHAPTEK II. 

When Lord Grey took up the subject 
of parliamentary reform in 1793, he 
offered to prove that seventy peers, by 
direct nomination or influence, returned 
153 members, and ninety-one common- 
ers returned 139 members ; or that in 
England and Wales (exclusive of Scot- 
land) 302 members, a majority of the 
House of Commons, were returned by 
162 persons. Charles James Fox made 
a strong speech in favor of Grey's mo- 
tion, feeling that, in the distressed con- 
dition of affairs, giving the people a 
larger share in the government would 
inspire the nation with increased confi- 
dence. So great was the dread caused by 
the French Revolution, and such was the 
reluctance of the higher classes to part 
with power, that these attempts at reform 
were voted down for over thirty years. 

The fraud and mockery of borough 
elections, ^' the vile machinery of openly- 

[16] 



Necessity of Reform, in Elections. 17 

marketable votes," the increase of intel- 
ligence and property among the disfran- 
chised, exasperation at exclusion from 
political rights, had slowly weaned the 
people from their ancient attachments, 
and the wisest statesmen saw the need of 
amending the system of representation 
and of making concessions to the increas- 
ing popular demand. What Grey had 
exposed and condemned, near forty years 
before, remained unreformed evils. Old 
Sarum, Gatton, Ludgershall, with few or 
no electors, had members in Parliament. 
Public opinion was hardly an element in 
the choice of constituencies. Two-thirds 
of the House of Commons was made up 
of the nominees of peers or landlords. 
One duke returned eleven members. 
Seats were openly bought and sold. 
Populous towns, such as Manchester and 
Birmingham, were without representa- 
tion. England became profoundly agi- 
tated. In 1831, Earl Grey brought in a 
bill for reform, which was debated with 
great ability for seven weeks by the 
House of Commons and rejected by a 



18 William Ewart Gladstone. 

majority of eight. The ministers imme- 
diately tendered their resignations, but 
the King (William IV) , who was in favor 
of reform, refused to accept them, and 
dissolved the Parliament. The people, 
to whom the question was referred, re- 
turned a majority favorable to the mea- 
sure. A new bill was discussed for near 
three months, and passed by a majority 
of 109. The House of Lords rejected. 
The nation was greatly stirred. Peti- 
tions poured in upon Parliament. The 
feeling became violent and expressed 
itself in language like this : the measure 
must be carried through Parliament or 
over Parliament. Public meetings were 
held in all parts of the kingdom. Riots 
occurred in some of the large towns. 
Some of the most unpopular lords were 
assaulted in the streets ; others were 
burned in effigy. There was a resolute 
determination that reform should be 
carried. In satire of the vain efforts of 
the Lords to resist the popular will, Syd- 
ney Smith, the witty Whig preacher, 
used his well-known illustration of Mrs. 



Beform Bill of 1832. 19 

Partington trundling her mop and vig- 
orously pushing back the Atlantic ocean. 
During the debate Sir James Mackin- 
tosh, in the House of Commons, and 
Chancellor Brougham, in the House of 
Lords, made their celebrated speeches, 
which have since served as text-books 
for all students of the question. The 
bill was introduced for the third time 
and passed by a majority of 162, but the 
Lords rejected it by a majority of 39. 
The ministry instantly resigned, but the 
King invited them back on the condition 
that he would create enough new lords 
to carry the bill. To escape such a hu- 
miliation many of the opposing lords 
absented themselves, and reform was 
passed by the upper House by a vote of 
105 to 22. The aristocracy tried to per- 
suade the King to withhold his assent to 
the measures, but it became a law on the 
7th of June, 1832, the King approving 
by royal commissioners. A great vic- 
tory was won, and a fruitful change was 
made in the constitution. It is singular 
that the judgment of good and enlight- 



20 William Ewart Gladstone. 

ened men can be so perverted as to make 
them oppose the welfare and progress of 
the country, and to convert them into the 
enemies of the people. As a singular 
illustration of how class feeling and spe- 
cial prerogatives may pervert minds and 
consciences, it may be stated that in 1818 
almost the whole bench of English bish- 
ops opposed Sir Samuel Romilly in his 
effort to induce Parliament to abolish 
capital punishment for stealing to the 
value of four shillings from shops. The 
Duke of Wellington, whose devotion to 
his country no one could question, said 
he had not heard of any measure ''by 
which the state of representation could 
be improved, or placed on a footing more 
satisfactory^ to the people. ^ ^ ^ j 
am thoroughly convinced that England 
possesses at this moment a legislature 
which answers all the good purposes of 
a legislature in a higher degree than any 
scheme of government whatever has been 
found to do in any country in the world.'' 
The Reform law disappointed the vati- 
cinations of those who saw in it insecu- 



Early Parliamentary Life, 21 

rity of property and overthrow of the 
crown. As happened in 1885, the Re- 
formed House of Commons did not show 
such an alteration in the composition of 
the body as was anticipated. Among 
the new members was Mr. Gladstone, 
who, on the invitation of the Duke of 
Newcastle, contested the borough of New- 
ark, and was returned at the head of the 
poll. At the early age of twenty-two he 
began his parliamentary career, the most 
remarkable in the history of free govern- 
ment. 

The first Parliament under the Reform 
act met on the 29th of January, 1833. 
Two important measures were passed. 
The commercial monopoly of the East 
India Company was abolished, and the 
trade to the East was thrown open to all 
merchants. Slavery in the British colo- 
nies was abolished, and the owners of the 
negroes were paid £20,000,000 for their 
property. It was on a side issue, or an 
incidental, question growing out of the 
slavery legislation, that Mr. Gladstone 
m.ade his maiden speech. On three 



22 William Ewart Gladstone. 

other occasions he spoke during the 
year. He did not oppose abolition, re- 
garding ^' the state of slavery as an evil 
and a demoralizing state," but he de- 
fended the slave-owners, among whom 
was his father, against charges of cruelty 
brought against them, and favored ap- 
prenticeship as being less hurtful than 
immediate emancipation. His position 
has been much misrepresented, but his 
predictions have been singularly verified. 
On the principle of slavery he agreed 
with the Abolitionists like CI ark son and 
Wilberforce, but he urged the danger and 
unwisdom of suddenly freeing the slaves 
without some preparatory education and 
without taking some precaution to insure 
that they would use their freedom pro- 
perly. His speeches were courageous, for 
in places of public worship and in social 
gatherings the planters were decried as 
moral monsters, and all who did not agree 
with the extremists were anathematized. 
These speeches gave such proofs of ability 
and such a prophecy of greatness that his 
desirableness as a minister was debated 



Early Parliamentary Life. 



23 



and decided on, and Sir Robert Peel, the 
Prime Minister, invited him to the office 
of Junior Lord of the Treasury. He was 
soon promoted to beUnd^r Secretary tor 
the Colonies, where he furnished abun- 
dant proof of good business qualities. 
Peel's government had a short lease of 
power, and the Under Secretary retired 
with his chief. As a member of the op- 
position he was attentive to general legis- 
lation, participated in the debates, but 
avoided acrimony of controversy, and 
secured respect and admiration by his 
uniform courtesy and growing impor- 
tance. In 184f the Whig government 
was overthrown. The House of Com- 
mons passed a resolution that it did not 
possess sufficiently their confidence to 
enable it to carry through measures 
deemed essential to the public welfare, 
and that continuance in office under such 
circumstances was at variance with the 
spirit of the constitution. Parliament 
was prorogued, and a new election was 
ordered. This resulted in a Tory major- 
ity, and in the consequent new ministry 



24 William Ewart Gladstone. 

Mr. Gladstone received the appointment 
of Vice-President of the Board of Trade 
and Master of the Mint. His duties en- 
grossed his mind, for in every depart- 
ment of public affairs to which he was 
called he carried indefatigable industry 
and an honest purpose to promote the 
public service. Schemes of practical le- 
gislation were devised by his busy brain, 
and he introduced and pushed forward, 
until the royal assent was obtained, bills 
for the abolition of restrictions on the 
exportation of machinery and for the 
improvement of railway transportation. 
In 1845 the ministry proposed an in- 
crease of the endowment of the Roman 
Catholic College of Maynooth, in Ire- 
land. This measure, being at variance 
with views Mr. Gladstone had uttered 
upon the relations of the church and 
the state, he was compelled by his self- 
respect, without, however, prejudging 
the question, and while retaining for his 
colleagues '^unaltered sentiments, both 
of public regard and private attach- 
ment," to resign his post in the min- 



Corn Laws. 25 

istry. Lord John Russell and Sir Robert 
Peel both avowed their respect and ad- 
miration for his character and abilities. 
Greville says that Peel lavished praise 
and regrets upon him in a tone quite 
affectionate. 

The Corn laws were the principle of 
protection applied to agriculture, a tax 
on the people's bread. Anti-Corn-Law 
associations were formed and afterwards 
merged into the Anti-Corn-Law League, 
which, for seven weary years, with per- 
sistency, unflagging courage and gener- 
ous liberality, prosecuted the work of 
repeal. This was the application of free 
trade at once to agriculture as well as to 
manufactures — a principle in its applica- 
tion to the complicated conditions of in- 
dustry and commerce which few states- 
men then understood, or had taken the 
pains to study. Some declared it im- 
practicable and as little likely to be ac- 
complished as the overthrow of the mon- 
archy; others paraded the stereotyped 
hobgoblin that it would imperil the union 
of church and state. 



26 William Ewart Gladstone. 

This extraordinary contest is an inter- 
esting chapter in the annals of England, 
and well illustrates the patient and al- 
most superhuman effort required to wrest 
from privilege and wealth what is de- 
manded for human liberty and happi- 
ness. The Corn-Law League was a pow- 
erful and effective organization for polit- 
ical action, but success would have been 
more difficult, if not impossible, if the 
agitation had not been preceded by the 
Reform bill of 1832. The two were cor- 
related, mutually helpful and retroactive. 
Cobden was the master spirit of the move- 
ment for cheap bread, and he organized 
it for victory. He inspired and consoli- 
dated the scattered elements; instructed 
the nation, made converts of enemies and 
secured the co-operation of those who had 
the power to adopt the requisite legisla- 
tion. He brought ^Hhe abstract conclu- 
sions of political economy within range 
of the understanding of all classes and 
conditions of people," and demonstrated 
that it was tne condition of the hungry, 
and not the interest of a class, which 
cried for relief. 



Corn Laws. 27 

The Corn Law League doubtless con- 
tributed to the downfall of the Melbourne 
administration in 184L Under Peel's 
government, repeal was defeated by a 
majority of 303. In June, 1845, it was 
again defeated by a majority of 132. Peel 
and Russell, the two great party leaders, 
having been converted to the cause, Peel 
brought in a bill for the repeal and car- 
ried it by a majority of nearly 100 votes. 
There had been no general election to pro- 
duce this revolution. The same House, 
the same Government, the same Prime 
Minister, who had opposed and defeated 
in 1841, repealed in 1845. The repeal 
took full effect on 1st Februarv, 1849. 

In 1845, Mr. Gladstone published a 
pamphlet. Remarks upon Recent Commer- 
cial Legislation, in which he urged that 
English statesmen should use every effort 
to disburden of all legal charges the ma- 
terials of industry, and thus enable the 
workman to approach his work at home 
on better terms. These broad views soon 
found expansion and practical recogni- 
tion in Sir Robert PeeFs recommenda- 



28 William Ewart Gladstone. 

tion of the repeal of the Corn laws. The 
change of opinion on the part of the 
premier was an act of courageous and 
magnanimous statesmanship, and inter- 
rupted many cherished personal and po- 
litical friendships; but he had the cour- 
age of his convictions and entered upon 
that policy which resulted in bringing 
Great Britain to her present beneficial 
system of comparative free trade. The 
Corn law repeal led to a reconstruction 
of the Peel government, and Mr. Glad- 
stone became Colonial Secretary in place 
of Lord Stanley. This acceptance of office 
in a ministry pledged to the repeal of the 
Corn laws led to his retirement from the 
representation of Newark, a borough un- 
der the influence of the Duke of New- 
castle, an ardent protectionist. Without 
a seat in the house, the great minister was 
deprived of his powerful support there, 
but it is well known that he was the most 
advanced statesjiian on the free trade 
question in the Peel cabinet, and that he 
was a most efficient allv of Cobden and 
Peel in finally sweeping from the statute 



Navigation Laws. 29 

book the obnoxious laws. "When the Tory 
government of Lord Stanley (then Lord 
Derby) came into power in 1852, an effort 
was made to return to the protectionist 
policy, but, after the appeal to the coun- 
try, Disraeli, the leader of the govern- 
ment in the House of Commons, found 
it necessary not to attempt to interfere 
with the repeal. 

Free trade, as a theory of politics, fol- 
lowed to its logical consequences, re- 
quired the throwing open of the whole 
navigation of the country, of every sort 
and description. Commerce is the life 
of Great Britain. Whatever stands in 
the way of supplying the markets of the 
world with her products must be gotten 
rid of, if possible. It is needful to clear 
herself of everything that obstructs the 
success of the extension of manufactures 
and commerce. Foreign trade could not 
be secured or permanently preserved 
were she to persevere in restrictive laws 
and in seeking to build herself up by 
avoidance of generous, manly competi- 
tion. In 1849, the proposition of the 



30 William Ewart Gladstone. 

government for the repeal of the naviga- 
tion laws had in Mr. Gladstone an ear- 
nest advocate. England abolished her 
restrictive navigation laws, and, to secure 
the world's carrying trade, repealed all 
her prohibitory statutes and permitted 
her merchants to supply themselves with 
ships wherewith to carry on their busi- 
ness from any source from which ships 
could be obtained with advantage. The 
coasting trade of Great Britain is also 
open to all nations. These relaxations 
have been so beneficial that England is 
now the first nation in shipping and 
commerce. It was predicted that freeing 
her trade and ships would be the destruc- 
tion of the wooden walls of old England 
and her reduction to the rank of a third- 
rate power. The result has been greatly 
augmented prosperity. In 1840 the ton- 
nage of Great Britain was 6,490,000 tons; 
in 1889 it had risen to 52,469,654 tons. 
In 1888 she owned seven -twelfths of the 
world's sliipping and 70 per cent, of the 
world's tonnage, and her sailing fleet, 
numbering 15,025 vessels and represent- 



Neapolitan Controversy, 31 

ing over 3,000,000 tons, was the largest 
in the world. 

In the winter of 1850-'51 occurred an 
episode in Mr. Gladstone's life which 
had a marked effect on his political views 
and party connections, on public opin- 
ion in Europe, and the development of 
nationality in Italy. Ferdinand, King 
of Naples, by an arbitrary exercise of 
power, had banished or imprisoned a 
number of persons who were of the op- 
position in the Chamber of Deputies. 
In addition to these deputies fully 20,000 
political prisoners had been thrown into 
crowded and loathsome dungeons in the 
Kingdom of the Two SicilieSc Mr. Glad- 
stone, residing temporarily in Naples, 
had his attention called to this scandal 
and tyranny, and he set himself to work 
to ascertain the truth of the rumors and 
accusations. Becoming thoroughly sat- 
isfied, he felt impelled to attempt a re- 
lease of the prisoners, or a modification 
of the harshness of the confinement, as 
well as a redress of the evils which Avere 
a scandal to civilization. He addressed 



32 William Eivart Gladstone. 

two letters, which passed through many 
editions, to the Earl of Aberdeen, on the 
state prosecutions of the Neapolitan gov- 
ernment, in which he held up to public 
view the outrages perpetrated by the 
government ^^upon religion, upon civil- 
ization, upon humanity, and upon de- 
cency." In language which sent a thrill 
of horror and indignation through Eu- 
rope and America, he alleged a '' delibe- 
rate, systematic violation of the law by 
the power appointed to watch over and 
maintain it." '^It is such violation of 
human and written law as this, carried 
on for the purpose of violating ever}^ 
other law, unwritten and eternal, human 
and divine; it is the wholesale persecu- 
tion of virtue when united with intelli- 
gence, operating upon such a scale that 
entire classes may with truth be said to 
be its object, so that the government is 
in bitter and cruel, as Avell as utterly 
illegal, hostility to whatever in the na- 
tion really lives and moves and forms 
the mainspring of practical progress and 
improvement; it is the awful profana- 



Neapolitan Controversy. ' S^ 

tion of public religion, by its notorious 
alliance, in the governing powers, with 
the violation of every moral law under 
the stimulants of fear and vengeance; it 
is the perfect prostitution of the judicial 
office, which has made it, under veils 
only too threadbare and transparent, the 
degraded recipient of the vilest and clum- 
siest forgeries, got up wilfully and delib- 
erately by the immediate advisers of 
the crown for the purpose of destroying 
the peace, the freedom, ay, and even, if 
not by capital sentences, the life of men 
among the most virtuous, upright, intel- 
ligent, distinguished and refined of the 
whole community; it is the savage and 
cowardly system of moral, as well as in a 
lower degree of physical, torture, through 
which the sentences extracted from the 
debased courts of justice are carried into 
effect." 

Lord Palmerston sent copies of the let- 
ters to the English representatives at the 
various courts of Europe, to be laid before 
the governments, with the hope of induc- 
ing them to aid in having reformed the 
3 



34 William Ewart Gladstone. 

evils exposed. Numerous and enven- 
omed replies were made, but they were 
so weak and inconclusive as to justify a 
strengthening of the statements. An au- 
thorized reply by the Neapolitan govern- 
ment was published in the Journal des 
Dehats and paid for. This official docu- 
ment was an appeal to the tribunal of 
public opinion and a tacit acknowledg- 
ment that governments, Bourbon and 
despotic, were responsible, not alone to 
the governed but to humanity as well. 
To this responsible antagonist Mr. Glad- 
stone published a rejoinder, showing that 
the official declaration was an admission 
of the accuracy of nine-tenths of the let- 
ters to the Earl. 

The interference was timely in its ar- 
raignment of a tyrant at the bar of law 
and civilization, and in bringing about 
redress, although too tardy. In the course 
of a few years the despotism fell and the 
Two Sicilies became a part of united It- 
aly. A contributing cause to the unifica- 
tion and redemption of the classical Pen- 
insula Avas the bold and unanswerable 



Neapolitan Controversy.. 35 

attack made by the English statesman. 
Reference to the incident has been pro- 
longed because of its conceded influence 
as auxiliary to the change in Italy, which 
is, considering the civil and ecclesiasti- 
cal obstacles, among the gre'atest mar- 
vels of modern times. 'As late as 1854, 
Palmerston could not be persuaded that 
the unity of Italy was the basis for re- 
form. Happily, Cavour, with his saga- 
cious and masculine intellect, secured 
the co-operation of Garibaldi, and by 
^'the greatest master-stroke of the last 
half century" secured for his country a 
place among the great powers of Europe, 
and afterwards united all Italy under one 
government. Cavour was the chief agent 
in the regeneration of his country. He 
was a consummate diplomatist, a great 
parliamentary leader, an accomplished 
statesman, who realized the boast of 
Themistocles by making a small state 
into a great one. He died in 1861; the 
consolidation was not then thoroughly 
completed, but he lived to see his task 
all but accomplished. 



CHAPTER III. 

As has been seen, Gladstone's Tor}^ and 
High Church environments gave the bias 
to his early religious and political views 
and determined his associations and ac- 
tions. Macaulay, in his review of The 
State in its Relations with the Church, pro- 
perly inscribed to the University of Ox- 
ford as in its temper not alien from her 
own, speaks of the author as ''the rising 
hope of the stern and unbending Tories." 
The strength of his youth and early man- 
hood was given to that party, and he 
brought to its support affluence of dic- 
tion, irrepressible energy, flowing cour- 
tesy, increasing administrative and par- 
liamentary knowledge and skill, and sin- 
cere conscientiousness. To Sir Robert 
Peel he gave a loyal and able support, at 
times, however, evincing independence of 
judgment, and giving promise of what 
Macaulay had observed, " a laudable de- 
sire to penetrate beneath the surface of 

[86] 



Transition Period. 37 

questions, and to arrive, by long and in- 
tent meditation, at the knowledge of great 
general laws." Principles may be im- 
mutable, but their application is very va- 
riable, contingent on a thousand circum- 
stances. The condition of a people may 
change essentially. What might be true 
in an ideal state of society, or with a ma- 
tured government, or with strength and 
wealth and peace, might be very unwise 
or inexpedient in war, or bankruptcy, or 
feebleness, or immaturity, or primitive- 
ness. With new conditions a statesman 
should have liberty to change his opin- 
ions. Infallibility is no more attainable 
in political or financial than in ecclesias- 
tical or religious problems. The ingenu- 
ous man, conscious of increase of know- 
ledge or wisdom, of altered circumstances, 
must regulate opinions and conduct ac- 
cordingly. Obstinate, dogged adherence 
to an opinion once formed and expressed, 
irrespective of progress of events, of new 
light, and regardless of the duty to follow 
the leadings of truth, makes all instruc- 
tion valueless, all reading and debate un- 



88 William Ewart Gladstone. 

necessary, all progress impossible. That 
there can never be a legitimate change 
in politics rests upon a fallacious as- 
sumption. ^^I am accused/' said Mr. 
Gladstone, ^^of want of conformity in my 
opinions. I have not pretended to it. 
I have been all my life a learner, and I 
am so still." Instead of making a deity 
of former opinions, or claiming inerra- 
bility, or enslaving himself to party or to 
men, Gladstone has sought ever for truth, 
and has not been timid or self-seeking in 
following it. Some of his ecclesiastical 
and political associates saw, in his philo- 
sophical generalizations, in his earnest 
searching for the right, in his determi- 
nation to get to the root of questions, in 
his independent utterances, little hope of 
binding him to blind tradition, or autho- 
rity, or self-satisfied conservatism. Dr. 
Wordsworth, in 1847, abstained from sup- 
porting him as the member for the Uni- 
versity of Oxford, because his writings 
appeared 'Ho contain the germ of libera- 
tion principles and of the political equal- 
ity of all religions," and he thought he 



Transition Period. 39 

saw that Gladstone ^^ would become a Lib- 
eral of the Liberals both upon the church 
and all other questions." More than once 
he sacrificed ofiice to convictions of duty. 

As showing transition in opinion and 
conviction and marking the most com- 
plete revolution of conduct and party af- 
filiations, two or three illustrations will 
sufiice. 

(a) In 1841, on the hustings at New- 
ark, Gladstone assured the electors that 
^Hhere were two points upon which the 
British farmer might rely — the first be- 
ing that adequate protection would be 
given him, and the second that protection 
would be given him through the means of 
the sliding scale." When, considerably 
against his will, he was first called to the 
Department of Trade, this made it neces- 
sary 'Ho study as hard as I could," quot- 
ing his own language, ''all the questions 
connected with our commerce, of which, 
down to that time, I had known little or 
nothing; and the effect of the study upon 
my mind was rapid and decisive, for it 
at once began to act as a powerful solv- 



40 William Ewart Gladstone. 

ent upon whatever protective ideas I had 
been accustomed to learn and imbibe." 
When the repeal of the Corn laws b.ecame 
a burning practical question, he bent his 
powers anew to the study of problems of 
trade and finance, and following the light 
of reason he co-operated vigorously with 
his chief. Unable to resist the arguments 
in favor of free trade, he boldly announced 
his convictions as opposed to ''so-called 
protective laws, which fetter industry, di- 
minish wealth, and aggravate distress." 
This was as complete a summersault as 
the great South Carolina and Massachu- 
setts statesmen, Calhoun and Webster, 
made in reverse directions on the tariff. 
(6) The change of opinion and action 
on church questions has been peculiar 
and a little inexplicable, perhaps contra- 
dictory. Retention of High Church con- 
nections, acceptance of certain exclusive 
dogmas and sacerdotal theories, unswerv- 
ing loyalty to the Anglican Church and 
the establishment in England, are still 
the guides of legislative action, so far 
as pertains to England, but outside of 



Change of Opinions and Parties. 41 

England, and in matters not affecting 
the integrity of the establishment, there 
have been departures from early views 
quite as wide and antipodal as on ques- 
tions of trade and finance and popular 
liberty. When the establishment is not 
involved there is a signal elevation of 
view and an unusual capability of re- 
garding ecclesiastical questions and reli- 
gious differences from a broad and gene- 
rous and tolerant standpoint. 

The Oxford Union Society in his uni- 
versity days grappled with the questions 
which engaged the energies of maturer 
men. At that time Gladstone opposed 
the removal of Jewish disabilities. When 
Mr. Gladstone was a young member of 
Parliament the status of the Anglican 
Church in its connection with the state 
was undergoing an earnest discussion. 
Non-conformists were vigorously assault- 
ing the national establishment and sup- 
port of a single church or denomination, 
and demanding religious equality and 
liberty. In 1837 and 1838 a strong feel- 
ing had been aroused among the sup- 



42 William Ewart Gladstone. 

porters and beneficiaries of the alliance. 
Vested and powerful interests, as long as 
they prevail, never want advocates, who 
bring out all their powers of intellect 
and all the perverse precedents of his- 
tory, to find out specious mitigations of 
their evil effects and make the worse ap- 
pear the better cause. Adroit as such 
advocacy may be, it sometimes does not 
look beyond present triumph. The more 
conscientious or sagacious of the sup- 
porters of an antagonized policy appre- 
ciate the necessity of finding a stable 
basis or permanent principles on which 
to rest their defence. With his sincer- 
ity and his habits of investigation, Mr. 
Gladstone could not content himself with 
the common and popular theories of the 
union of church and state, nor with the 
plausible, but untenable, arguments by 
which it was sustained. He saw the 
need of more accurate definitions, of 
fixing the limits of governmental inter- 
ference, and of meeting the objection 
that to tax one citizen for the support 
of another's religion is unjust in itself 



Change oj Opinions and Parties. 43 

and quite apart from the individual, so- 
cial and political welfare which taxation 
should be designed to secure. He there- 
fore published The State in its Relations to 
the Church, in which, as a protest against 
expediency doctrines, he set himself to 
prove that the state ought to have a reli- 
gion, to be religious, and to teach reli- 
gious truth to all its subjects, and that 
the state should do nothing without ref- 
erence to the Divine will. It is but just 
to give his reasons for supporting the es- 
tablishment. 

''Because the government stands with 
us in a paternal relation to the people, 
and is bound in all things to consider 
not merely their existing tastes, but the 
capabilities and ways of their improve- 
ment; because it has both an intrinsic 
competency and external means to am- 
end and assist their choice; because to be 
in accordance with God's mind and will 
it must have a religion, and because to 
be in accordance with its conscience that 
religion must be the truth, as held by 
it under the most solemn and accumu- 



44 Willium Ewart Gladstone. 

lated responsibilities; because this is the 
only sanctifying and preserving princi- 
ple of society, as well as to the individual 
that particular benefit without which all 
others are worse than valueless; we must 
disregard the din of political contention 
and the pressure of worldly and moment- 
ary motives, and in behalf of our regard 
to man, as well as of our allegiance to 
God, maintain among ourselves, where 
happily it still exists, the union between 
the church and the state." 

Such a treatise, defending the union 
on higher grounds than it had previ- 
ously been placed, elicited many com- 
ments, both favorable and adverse. The 
most conclusive reply, from an English- 
man's point of view, was by Macaulay 
in the Edinburgh Review, and he averred 
that Gladstone's whole theory rested upon 
the fundamental proposition that the pro- 
pagation of religious truth is one of the 
chief ends of government as government. 
By searching analysis, by crushing logic, 
by apt and copious illustrations, by un- 
surpassed brilliancy of style, the reviewer 



Change of Opinions and Parties. 45 

combated the theory and demonstrated 
the fallacy of the doctrine that every asso- 
ciation which exercises any power what- 
ever, and especially that a civil govern- 
ment, is bound, as such association, to 
possess a religion. Mr. Gladstone, in a 
letter to Macaulay, disclaimed the infer- 
ence that his theory or argument con- 
templated the process of disabling, or dis- 
qualifying for civil office, all those who 
did not adhere to the religion of the state, 
and denied that he had ever propounded 
the maxim simpliciter that an establish- 
ment was to be maintained. The object 
of his work, as he defined it, was ''to sur- 
vey the actual state of the relations be- 
tween the state and the church; to show 
from history the ground which had been 
defined for the national church at the Re- 
formation; and to inquire and determine 
whether the existing state of things was 
worth preserving and defending against 
encroachment from whatever quarter. '' 

To an American, with his experience of 
voluntaryism and holding to the inviola- 
bility of the human conscience and that 



46 William Ewart Gladstone. 

religion is outside the sphere of civil gov- 
ernment, and to any one regarding the 
New Testament as the law of Christian 
life and the limit of authority for Chris- 
tian churches, all these arguments, j^ro 
and con, by such disputants as Macaulay 
and Gladstone even, seem singularly su- 
perficial and unsatisfactory, as not reach- 
ing the gist of the matter and as begin- 
ning and continuing the discussion too 
remote from the foundation principle — 
the authoritativeness of the New Testa- 
ment. 

In consistency with his views, during 
the Peel administration — August, 1841, 
to July, 1(S46 — Mr. Gladstone resisted the 
onslaughts made upon the Irish Church, 
as he did the bills abolishing the Uni- 
versity Tests, extinguishing the church 
rate grievances, encouraging education 
by Priv}^ Council grants and removing 
the civil disabilities of the Jews. Grad- 
uallv convictions chan2;ed and measures 
advancing towards perfect toleration had 
his active friendship. On the dissolution 
of the Parliament by the Queen in per- 



Change of Opinions and Parties, 47 

son in 1847 a general election became 
necessary. The return of Baron Roths- 
child for the city of London provoked 
much controversy and drew out doleful 
forebodings from unprogressive Toryism. 
A statutory declaration ^'on the faith of 
a Christian" was required of all taking 
seats in the House of Commons. To 
remove this restriction Lord John Rus- 
sell, shortly after the assembling of Par- 
liament, proposed a resolution affirming 
the eligibility of Jews to all functions 
and offices to which Roman Catholics 
were admissible by law. Gladstone, in 
favoring the resolution, inquired where- 
in Jews were distinguishable from any 
other classes in the community. "When 
he formerly opposed the law for the re- 
moval of Jewish disabilities he foresaw 
that, if municipal, magisterial and execu- 
tive functions were given to the Jews, le- 
gislative functions could not any longer 
be refused. In case of difficulty the mem- 
bers would have the consolation of know- 
ing that they had yielded to a sense of 
justice, and by so doing had not dispar- 



48 William Ewart Gladstone. 

aged religion or lowered Christianity, but 
had rather elevated both in all reflecting 
and well-regulated minds. The motion 
being carried by a large majority, Lord 
John subsequently moved that the House 
resolve itself into a committee on the 
oaths to be taken bv members, with a 
view to relief. Gladstone said he would 
not shrink from declaring his deliberate 
conviction that the civil and political 
claims of the Jew to the discharge of civil 
and political duties ought not, in justice, 
to be barred, and could not beneficiallvbe 
barred because of a difference in religion. 
The lives of few men show such an 
advance in Liberal opinions as may be 
found in Mr. Gladstone. He who took 
such a view in 1838 of the desirableness 
of an establishment succeeded, a genera- 
tion later, as Prime Minister, in disestab- 
lishing a branch of the church in Ireland. 
This change provoked animadversion and 
abuse far in excess of any that mere po- 
litical changes had brought upon his 
head. To deprive incumbents of valua- 
ble privileges which were obtained with- 



Change of Opinions and Parties. 49 

out labor or money, and which offered a 
lifetime enjoyment of comfortable ease, 
naturally excited ill feeling and bitter re- 
sistance. To interfere with annuities de- 
rivable from property held by the church, 
even though the property, hundreds of 
years before, came from confiscation or 
government grants, seems by some pe- 
culiar or perverse psychological law to 
awaken more bitterness than if the prop- 
erty had been acquired in ordinary secu- 
lar transactions between man and man. 
Mr. Gladstone became a convert to the 
theory that a popular government can- 
not rightly maintain a religion which is 
opposed to the feelings and convictions 
of the nation, and followed his change of 
views by his grandest and most difficult 
achievement. This, like other transac- 
tions, was not sudden, for '4t extended 
over a quarter of a century," and was in 
nowise due to mental eccentricity or self- 
ish ambition. It was the logic not so 
much of events, of revolutions in society, 
as of broader principles and juster views 
of government and of the rights of man. 

4 



50 William Ewart Gladstone. 

In the session of 1867 Mr. Gladstone 
said it was idle, it was mockery, to urge 
the Irish people to loyalty and union 
unless the words were sustained by cor- 
responding substance. In a remarkable 
speech, asking justice to Ireland, he con- 
cluded by an impassioned appeal to pru- 
dent men, to chivalrous men, to compas- 
sionate men, but above all to just men, 
^4n the name of truth and right, bearing 
this in mind, that when the case is proved 
and the hour is come, justice delayed is 
justice denied." This address became 
the ''platform" of the Liberal party, and 
Irish Church disestablishment was ac- 
cepted as the paramount issue of the 
approaching campaign. He soon intro- 
duced into the House of Commons a 
series of resolutions, the first of which 
was that the established Church of Ire- 
land should cease to exist as an estab- 
lishment, due regard being had ''to all 
personal interests and to all individual 
rights of property." Disraeli, Stanley 
and other members of the government, 
being strongly in favor of ecclesiastical 



Disestablishment of the Irish Church. 51 

endowments and opposed to the destruc- 
tion of the Irish establishment, issue Avas 
joined, and on the 30th of March began 
one of those remarkable debates which 
have made the House of Commons the 
theatre of parliamentary oratory and a 
school of liberty. Burning the bridge 
behind him, Mr. Gladstone declared his 
opinion, in unmistakable language, that 
the establishment in Ireland should cease 
to exist, and denied that the disendow- 
ment of the Irish Church would be 
dangerous to the English establishment. 
^' What was dangerous to the latter was to 
hold her in communion with a state of 
things politically dangerous and socially 
unjust. The church establishment, in its 
theory and in its aim, is beautiful and 
attractive, yet what is it but an appro- 
priation of public property, an appropri- 
ation of the fruits of labor and skill to 
certain purposes? and unless these pur- 
poses are fulfilled that apj^ropriation can- 
not be justified. What we have to do 
is to consider well and deeply before 
we take the first step in an engagement 



52 William Ewart Gladstone. 

such as this; but having entered into the 
controversy, there and then to acquit our- 
selves like men, and to use every effort 
to remove what still remains of the scan- 
dals and calamities in the relations which 
exist between England and Ireland, and 
to make our best efforts, at least, to fill 
up with the cement of human concord the 
whole fabric of the British empire." 

The resolution was carried by a ma- 
jority of 65. The government being de- 
feated, the Parliament, the last elected 
under the Reform bill of 1832, was pro- 
rogued with a view to its dissolution. 
Writs were issued for a new Parliament, 
and the returns showed a decided pre- 
ponderance in favor of the Liberal party. 
There were not fewer than 227 new mem- 
bers, who had not sat before. Gladstone, 
being summoned by the Queen, under- 
took to form a new ministry, which in- 
cluded John Bright, who thus excused 
his acceptance of office : '' Happily he 
trusted that the time had come when in 
this country an honest man might enter 
the service of the crown and at the same 



Disestablishment of the Irish Church. 53 

time not feel it in any degree necessary to 
dissociate himself from his own people." 
In 1708 Godolphin formed his govern- 
ment on a basis exclusively Whig; in 
1868 the Whig party disappears^ its mem- 
bership and organization being merged 
in the Liberal party. With a favorable 
sentiment in the House of Commons and 
in the country, disestablishment would 
seem comparatively easy, only a niatter 
of adjustment of details. Such was not 
the experience. Mastering details and 
applying them was found to be a diffi- 
cult and complex problem, and despite 
the popular sentiment, so overwhelm- 
ingly declared in the recent election, the 
Tories presented an organized and inces- 
sant resistance to every stage of the meas- 
ure. The undertaking, however ground- 
ed in justice and right, was the gravest 
of modern times. , Abuses yield reluct- 
antly. Popular grievances generally en- 
counter the virulent opposition of the up- 
per classes, especially of those who batten 
on the injustice. The establishment was 
interwoven with law, literature and man- 



54 William Ewart Gladstone. 

ners. It could plead a course of long 
observance for its continuance. Glad- 
stone's task was such as to tax to the 
maximum all his patience and courage 
and energies. His experience paralleled 
Mr. Jefferson's, Avho said, in reference to 
his share in the struggle for religious 
liberty in Virginia, ''the severest con- 
test in which I have ever 'been engaged." 
Public meetings, the press, the clergy. 
Conservatives in and out of Parliament, 
denounced the measure as robbery, as 
offensive to God, as wicked and abom- 
inable, as the greatest natk)nal sin ever 
committed, as perilous weakening of the 
foundations of property, as the entering 
wedge to greater wrongs, as treason to 
the crown. The common cry of danger 
to the church, awakening tragic appre- 
hensions, such as the clergy and the 
universities aroused at the general elec- 
tion of 1705, did its accustomed service. 
Gladstone and his colleagues and sup- 
porters were denounced as political brig- 
ands, as enemies of the country and the 
church. All that inventive hate could 



Disestablishment of the Irish Church 55 

concoct of calumny and opprobrium was 
heaped upon them. On the 1st of March 
Mr. Gladstone, for three hours, unfolded 
his scheme in a speech which, for excel- 
lence of arrangement, lucidity of state- 
ment, masterly marshaling of facts, vig- 
orous grasp of the subject, prodigious 
faculty of memory and thought, elasticity 
of genius and reliance upon lofty prin- 
ciple, was probably never surpassed in 
any deliberative assembly. Prescott, in 
The Conquest of Mexico, gives a thrilling 
description of the noche triste, or mel- 
ancholy night, so branded in their na- 
tional annals, when the invading Span- 
iards made their flight in 1520 from 
the city. Unlike that historic tragedy, 
this was a '^ night of justice, '^ immortal 
for application of noblest ethics to hu- 
man affairs, for leading an oppressed peo- 
ple from ecclesiastical bondage and ty- 
ranny into the light of freedom and right. 
Some sentences from the peroration of 
the luminous address will illustrate the 
exaltation of sentiment and fervor of pa- 
triotism of the orator. 



^ 



56 William Ewart Gladstone, 

^' I do not know in what country so 
great a change, so great a transition, has 
been proposed for the ministers of. a reli- 
gious communion who have enjoyed for 
many ages the preferred position of an 
established church. I can well under- 
stand that to many in the Irish establish- 
ment such a change appears to be nothing 
less than ruin and destruction. -^ * * I 
trust when, instead of the adventitious 
and fictitious aid on which we have too 
long taught the Irish establishment to 
lean, it should come to place its trust in 
its own resources, in its own great mis- 
sion, in all that it can draw from the 
energy of its ministers and members, 
and the high hopes and promises of the 
gospel that it teaches, it will find that it 
has entered upon a new era of existence, 
an era bright with hope and potent for 
good. * * This measure is in every sense 
a great measure, ^ ^ and great as a test- 
ing measure, for it will show for one and 
for all of us of what metal we are made. 
Upon us all it brings a great responsi- 
bility — great and foremost upon those 



Disestablishment of the Irish Church. 57 

who occupy this bench. We are espe- 
cially chargeable, nay, deeply guilty, if 
we have either dishonestly, as some think, 
or even prematurely or unwisely, chal- 
lenged so gigantic an issue. * * But 
the responsibility, though heavy, does 
not exclusively press upon us : it presses 
upon every man who has to take part 
in the discussion and decision upon this 
bill. Every man approaches the discus- 
sion under the most solemn obligations 
to raise the level of his vision and ex- 
pand its scope in proportion with the 
greatness of the matter in hand. The 
working of our constitutional government 
itself is upon its trial, for I do not be- 
lieve there ever was a time when the 
wheels of legislative machinery were set 
in motion, under conditions of peace and 
order and constitutional regularity, to 
deal with a question greater or more pro- 
found. -^ ^ * For myself and my col- 
leagues, I say we are sanguine of the is- 
sue. We believe, and for my part I am 
deeply convinced, that when the final 
consummation shall arrive, and when 



58 William Ewavt Gladstone. 

the words are spoken that shall give the 
force of law to the work embodied in this 
measure — the work of peace and justice — 
those words will be echoed upon every 
shore where the name of Ireland or the 
name of Great Britain has been heard, 
and the answer to them will come back 
in the approving verdict of civilized man- 
kind/' 

The progress of the bill was slow, en- 
countering obstacles at every step, but 
on the final vote it had a majority of 114. 
In the House of Lords the discussion was 
able and eloquent. Of the bishops, only 
a solitary vote, that of Dr. Thirlwall, was 
recorded in its favor. On its final pas- 
sage a protest of forty-nine peers was 
entered on the journal. One peer com- 
plained that the lords were humiliated 
and degraded ; another said they were 
called upon to yield to the arrogant will 
of a single man. This intemperance of 
speech grew, in part, out of what was 
understood to be Gladstone's purpose to 
appeal to the royal prerogative to make 
a number of peers sufficient to pass the 



Disestablishment of the Irish Church, 59 

measure in the event the Lords offered a 
factious and unrelenting opposition to a 
measure which was so indubitably de- 
manded by the popular will. Queen 
Anne had created twelve peers to carry 
the Peace of Utrecht, and Walpole was 
once threatened by a like proposal of the 
gravest constitutional moment. When 
the House of Peers threw out the Reform 
bill, Lord Gre}^, who was then Prime Min- 
ister, resigned because the King would 
not use his prerogative so as to overcome 
the opposition. On the 26th of July, 
1869, the Irish Church bill, which ranks 
alongside the Habeas Corpus act. Magna 
Charta, and the Right of Petition, re- 
ceived the assent of Queen Victoria. In 
1874 Gladstone referred in strong lan- 
guage to the part he had taken: '' I must 
say I do not repent the part I took. So 
far from repenting it, if I am to have a 
character with posterity at all — suppos- 
ing that posterity is ever to know that 
such a person as myself existed in this 
country — I am perfectly willing that my 
character should be tried simply and 



60 William Ewart Gladstone. 

solely by the proceedings to which I was 
a party with regard to the Irish Church 
establishment/' 

(c) Another instance of change of opin- 
ion might be omitted, but it illustrates 
the ingenuous candor of the subject of 
this study. In 1862 Mr. Gladstone ex- 
pressed his conviction that Mr. JeflPerson 
Davis had succeeded in making the Con- 
federate States an independent nation. 
In 1867 he frankly acknowledged, ^'I 
must confess that I was wrong, that I 
took too much upon myself in express- 
ing such an opinion. I probably, like 
many Europeans, did not understand the 
nature and working of the American 
Union." 

When Sir Robert Peel died, in June, 
1850, the Conservative party was with- 
out a leader, and the differences which 
had been already manifested among the 
members soon developed into positive dis- 
integration. Some of the members al- 
igned themselves with the Tories; others, 
embarrassed by traditions, remained for 
awhile neutral, or were drawn by an elec- 



Disintegration of the Conservative Party, 61r 

tive affinity into the Liberal organiza- 
tion. A transfer is seldom sudden and 
immediate, if it come from a change of 
convictions. Gladstone was gradually al- 
ienated from his former associates. The 
precise date of his abandonment is pro- 
bably undefined, even in his own con- 
sciousness. He has himself stated that 
he had not, so late as 1857, formally left 
the Tory party, but it is well known that 
he declined, in 1852, the earnest invita- 
tion of Lord Derby to become a member 
of his cabinet. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

Classification of governments as des- 
potic, monarchical, aristocratic or repub- 
lican, is very vague and unsatisfactory. 
With the exception of a pure despotism, 
which can exist only among rude sav- 
ages, all governments, in their practical 
administration, are complex, involving 
many instrumentalities and agencies and 
much subdivision in the effort to com- 
pound the public forces in wise and bal- 
anced action In Great Britain, the pres- 
ent system is the result of the slow, but 
not always regular, evolution of centu- 
ries, 'Hhe offspring of tendency and in- 
determinate time." The Cromwellian 
period and the Revolution of 1688 es- 
tablished irrevocably the most distin- 
guishing feature of modern civilized gov- 
ernments, that they exist for the benefit 
and by the -consent of the people. Di- 
vine right of kings and prescription as 
sources of authority are no longer rec- 

[62] 



Character of the English Government. G3 

ognized. Regal right is founded upon 
contract. A breach of that contract dis- 
solves the allegiance of the subject. Fox 
said that the right of self-government in 
a people does not depend on precedent, 
or the concessions of rulers, but is founded 
in the nature of things. It is not because 
they have been free, but because they have 
a right to be free, that men demand their 
freedom. The great struggle of the eigh- 
teenth century was whether the govern- 
ment of the realm should be parliamen- 
tary or monarchical. It was settled in 
favor of a Parliament, '^ containing, nom- 
inating, guiding and controlling its own 
executive;" but a '^hardly less import- 
ant question turned on the mechanism 
by which the system could be made to 
work." For conducting national affairs 
wisely and successfully, the House of 
Commons proved a better instrument 
than the close aristocracy of the House 
of Lords, or than the two Houses com- 
bined, for it possessed the exclusive pre- 
rogative of introducing bills of revenue, 
and had an increasing representation of 



64 William Ewart Gladstone. 

those classes and interests which, under 
the leveling spirit of commerce and de- 
mocracy, were asserting their importance 
and power. The House of Commons em- 
bodies " the living and social forces of 
the country in all their variety." To or- 
ganize the House for practical purposes 
required the support and discipline of a 
majority, cemented and unified by com- 
mon purposes and principles into one 
party. ''To keep administration in gear 
with the party majority," required a 
party cabinet, and this cabinet system 
has been the solution of the difficult and 
much-contested problem of administra- 
tion. The cabinet — which should be dis- 
tinguished from the rest of the ministry, 
subordinate and ancillary, having only a 
secondary and derivative share in the 
higher responsibilities — as a system of 
government, is perhaps ''the most cu- 
rious formation in the political world of 
modern times, for its subtlety, its elas- 
ticity, and its many-sided diversity of 
power." It is unknown to statutory law, 
and althou2:h in its idea and functions 



The Cabinet. 65 

now regarded as an essential element of 
the British constitution, it is not the 
pre-conceived offspring of philosophic 
thought, nor the concrete working out 
of an accepted abstract principle, but a 
growth, a development, from the silent ac- 
tion of invisible and unperceived forces. 
- The cabinet may now be considered the 
seat and centre of the working system of 
the state, to maintain the executive in 
the closest relation with the legislature, 
to govern "through the legislature, and to 
transfer the power and authority of the 
crown to the House of Commons. ^'At 
whatever date,'' says Morley, ^'we choose 
first to see all the decisive marks of that 
remarkable system which combines uni- 
ty, steadfastness, and initiation of the ex- 
ecutive, with the possession of supreme 
authority alike over men and measures 
by the House of Commons, it is certain 
that it was under Walpole that its ruling 
principles were first fixed in parliamen- 
tary government, and that the cabinet 
system received the impression that it 
bears in our own time." The victory of 



66 William Ewart Gladstone. 

the Whigs in the elections of 1705 brought 
the system into pretty clear outline and 
forced the recognition of two main prin- 
ciples: first, that the chief adviser of the 
crown chooses his colleagues, and next, 
that a cabinet depends upon a majority 
in the House of Commons. A vote of 
the House declaring want of confidence 
in the ministry has always sufficed for its 
displacement. Less than two hundred 
years ago a sovereign held in person a 
cabinet and was present at debates in the 
House of Lords. Since Queen Anne no 
sovereign has been present at a meet- 
ing of the cabinet,* and interference by 
the crown with legislation would be an 
infraction of the constitution, eliciting 
prompt protest if not more decisive proofs 
of resent. The political action of the mo- 
narch is not immediate and direct but 
mediate and conditional upon the con- 
currence of constitutional advisers. The 
ideas and practice of George III, whose 
will, in reference to the American colo- 

*In Spain the Queen Regent habitually presides, 
once a week, over the council of ministers. 



The Cabinet 67 

nies and other matters, limited and con- 
trolled the action of ministers, would be 
now regarded as dangerous to the public 
weal and to the dynasty; in fact, would 
not be tolerated. In 1783, a message 
from the King, expressing a strong dis- 
approbation of Fox's East India bill, was 
circulated among the peers, especially 
among the lords of the bed-chamber and 
other members of the royal household, 
whereupon the House of Commons de- 
clared that 'Ho report any opinion or 
pretended opinion of His Majesty upon 
any bill or other proceeding depending 
in either House of Parliament is a high 
crime and misdemeanor, derogatory to 
the honor of the crown, a breach of the 
fundamental privileges of Parliament, 
and subversive of the constitution of this 
country." As Mr. Gladstone has de- 
clared that in his judgment the cabinet, 
as a great organ of government, has now 
found its final shape, attributes, func- 
tions and permanent ordering, and as 
elucidating what is contained in this 
chapter, it may be recapitulated. 



68 William Ewart Gladstone. 

(1.) The cabinet is a unit, as regards 
the sovereign and as regards the legisla- 
ture. Its views are laid before the sov- 
ereign and before the Parliament, as if 
they were the views of one man. The 
first mark of a cabinet, as that institution 
is now understood, is united and indivis- 
ible responsibility. 

(2.) The cabinet is answerable imme- 
diately to the majority of the House of 
Commons and ultimately to the electors 
whose will creates that majority. 

(3.) Except under peculiar circum- 
stances the cabinet is selected exclu- 
sively from one party. 

(4.) The Prime Minister i^ "primus inter 
pares, and occupies a position of excep- 
tional influence and privilege, but has 
no special function or prerogative under 
the formal constitution of the office. As 
chief he has no official rank except that 
of Privy Councilor. As a minister, like 
his colleagues, he is administrator of *a 
department, a member of a legislative 
chamber, and a confidential adviser of 
the Crown. As chief or premier he is 



The Prime Minister. 69 

the leader in the House of Parliament 
of which he is a member; has many au- 
diences of the sovereign; is the means 
of communication between the cabinet 
as a whole and the crown ; reports the 
proceedings of the cabinet, and stands 
between the sovereign and Parliament. 
In cabinet meeting, all stand on equal 
footing, and the head of each department 
is ordinarily left to do his work in his 
own way. On business of a certain kind 
of importance it is his duty freely and 
voluntarily to call the chief into counsel. 
With the Foreign Secretary alone, the 
premier is in close and continuous com- 
munication as to the business of the of- 
fice. The present Prime Minister, Lord 
Salisbury, is the Foreign Secretary.- This 
is not usual, and may concentrate in one 
person large power in regard to foreign 
policy. In case of differences between 
departments the appeal lies to the Prime 
Minister, and the regular course for a 
minister who is dissatisfied with his 
chiefs decision is to retire. As a rule 
the resignation of the first minister dis- 



70 William Ewart Gladstone. 

solves the cabinet. Irreconcilable di- 
vergencies would probably lead to the 
resignation of the cabinet, but as a mat- 
ter of fact and of constitutional principle 
the Prime Minister is not bound to re- 
sign in case of disagreement with his 
colleagues, and they are bound either to 
acquiesce or to leave."^ 

An American reader need not be told 
that the English cabinet has little anal- 
ogy to the cabinet of the President, who 
are simply his advisers and agents and 
in no sense his colleagues. Between the 
administration of a President and an ad- 
ministration in England there are hardly 
enough points of resemblance to justify 
a comparison. In England the cabinet 
is the executive, the government, the 
administration, and on the administra- 
tion devolves the responsibility of taking 
the initiative in iall important legislation. 
The Prime Minister is often the leader 
of the House of Commons, and his func- 

* For this account of cabinet government, reference 
is made to May, Freeman, Amos, Wicks, &c., but 
special indebtedness is acknowledged to Morley's Wal- 
pole and Gladstone's Kin Beyond Sea. 



The Prime Minister. 71 

tions are as well known as those of the 
Speaker. The opposition may criticise, 
embarrass, ridicule, denounce, but it hes- 
itates to make a decisive issue, which 
may involve a defeat of the ministry, 
unless prepared to assume the respon- 
sibility of forming a new government, 
and of suggesting a policy well defined 
and different from that antagonized and 
defeated. In the session of 1866 a mo- 
tion of Sir R. Knightley on the Fran- 
chise Bill, adverse to the government, 
prevailed. He was unnerved when Mr. 
Gladstone said he would wait for the pro- 
duction of the scheme."^ 



* In connection with this discussion, the recent re- 
signation of Bismarck, the other great European states- 
man, is interesting. The North Oerman Gazette says : 

* ' The Chancellor did not wish to depart from the cab- 
inet order of 1852 relating to the intercourse between 
the Prussian ministers and the sovereign, but desired 
to retain his control and right of co-operation. 

** The intercourse between the Emperor and the Sec- 
retaries of State is regulated by the law of 1852. It 
was only within the last few weeks that Bismarck felt 
it necessary to refer to that regulation. He consid- 
ered its execution and observance indispensable, and 
did not wish to be a party to its abrogation. The op- 
position he encountered in this matter tinally brought 



72 William Eivart Gladstone. 

Constant references to the English 
constitution may be misleading to an 
ordinary American reader. The con- 
ception of a constitution, as understood 
here, is foreign to the English mind. In 
this country a constitution means an or- 
ganic law, of higher sanctions and adopt- 
ed with more formality than statutory 
law, wrought into shape with some elab- 
orateness of detail, expressed with preci- 
sion of language and reduced to writing. 

clearly home to him the necessity for his resigna- 
tion. 

"The cabinet order of September 8, 1852, has always 
been held by Bismarck as interpreting the Prussian 
Constitution to mean that the President of the Min- 
istry ought to appoint his own cabinet, choosing men 
having political opinions and principles in harmony 
with his own. The Emperor refused this reading, and 
maintained the right of the monarch to appoint min- 
isters having a direct responsibility, not to the Presi- 
dent, but to the crown. The Emperor, in a written 
communication, explained his views of monarchical 
prerogatives, his conviction that the Chancellor's 
claims were an encroachment on the rights of the 
sovereign, and, finally, his determination to exercise 
a general and absolute control. About the same time 
direct overtures to Windthorst and other leading 
clericals, aiming to take the guidance of negotiations 
out of Bismarck's hands, produced the climax of the 
crisis." 



The Constitution. 73 

The American Colonies laid the first 
constitutions, constructed on the lines of 
theoretical science, adopted with solemn 
form and embodying in systematic, tan- 
gible writing what are held to be the 
inalienable rights of the citizen. The 
English constitution is a remarkable and 
somewhat intangible thing, and yet it is 
living and potential. Frederick Harri- 
son, with some exaggeration, said: "It 
seldom leaves off at the end of a session 
of Parliament exactly as it stood at the , 
beginning of it." And yet Gladstone 
truly said: ''It is the most subtle or- 
ganism which has proceeded from the 
womb and the long gestation of progress- 
ive history." It has been widening and 
deepening for many centuries. Magna 
Charta of 1215, the Bill of Rights of 
1628, the Habeas Corpus act of 1629, the 
Act of Settlement of 1701, the Reform 
Bill of 1832 and subsequent corollary 
acts, enlarging suffrage and distributing 
representation, the various acts disestab- 
lishing the church in Ireland and break- 
ing down the exclusive privileges of the 



74 William Eivart Gladstone. 

Anglican Church, may be pointed out 
as the great landmarks of constitutional 
liberty. Besides these there are many 
usages and guarantees which cannot be 
found in specific and citable statutes ; 
they are only to be found ^^ expressed 
tacitly in institutions or scattered up 
and doAvn in archives and antiquated 
records." Unlike that of the United 
States, the English constitution is not 
compacted into one brief organic law. It 
is rather the elastic spirit of institutions, 
the impalpable essence which animates 
the political forms, controls them, and 
tends more and more to democratic lib- 
erty. What would describe the times of 
the Stuarts, of William III, of George III 
even, would be inapplicable in large de- 
gree now. It is common to speak of the 
Three Estates of the Realm as the Queen, 
the Lords and the Commons, but this is 
grossly inaccurate. The Queen is not 
an estate of the realm; in strictness of 
speech she is not the sovereign. She is 
the symbol of the nation's unity; the 
head of the Established Church; the 



The Constitution. 75 

fountain of titular distinctions; has a 
moral and social influence, but she has 
little executive and no legislative nor 
judicial power. ^^ Her Majesty's Minis- 
ters," as an official designation is a fic- 
tion, a myth, and has significance only 
as the ministers of Great Britain. The 
Three Estates of the Realm are practic- 
ally obsolete, and Great Britain and Ire- 
land approach the condition when there 
is but one estate, the people, and one 
sovereign, the people. It was once le- 
gitimate so to speak of the lords, the 
clergy and the commons as the three 
estates under the monarch, but that per- 
tains to the historical past. Under ex- 
isting forms the real chief of the execu- 
tive power, the most important official 
personage, is not the Queen, but the Prime 
Minister; the cabinet wields, with par- 
tial exceptions, the powers of the Privy 
Council, and the one dominant legislative 
body is the House of Commons, to whose 
decisions sovereign and House of Lords 
must, sooner or later, accommodate them- 
selves. 



76 William Ewart Gladstone. 

The thoughtful student sees that chan- 
ges are being effected in institutions, not 
violently, but more securely than by rev- 
olutions. Since 1880 many domestic re- 
forms have been achieved, which have en- 
abled the people to enter upon the enjoy- 
ment of wider liberties. Some changes 
have been wrought which have already 
produced surprising results. Gladstone, 
with keen foresight, has recognized that 
the political centre of gravity is gradually 
but surely changing. There has been a 
manifest removal from Parliament, from 
the House of Commons even, to the 
public opinion of the electors. What is 
known in congressional parlance as '^ a 
speech for buncombe " has become not in- 
frequent in the House of Commons, and 
questions are adjourned from that arena 
to *Hhe stump," the hustings. They are 
discussed before the people, for it is need- 
ful to consult and conciliate those who 
have the ultimate decision. While the 
responsibility of the initiative of legisla- 
tion is with the cabinet, it is in some 
measure thrown upon the constituencies. 



Idea of Representative Government. 11 

and thus by increase of voters the broad- 
est popular basis for government has been 
secured. Thus the sum total of forces 
enlisted in the nation's interest has been 
augmented and legislators become more 
keenly alive to the just interests of con- 
stituencies. It is one of Gladstone's ex- 
cellencies, a proof of his progress in poli- 
tics, of his approach to the American idea 
of a representative government, that he 
has almost implicit trust in the '^ sober, 
second thought" of the people, in their 
honest and patriotic purposes, in their 
willingness, when left free, to do right. 
Fresh ideas and new men are not cop- 
temned and rejected, but are cheerfully 
considered and impartially judged. 

The Jubilee of the Queen's reign made 
prominent her rule over 240,000,000 of 
people, over powerful and prosperous 
states, knitted by easy inter-communica- 
tion, improving in comforts of life and 
wealth, advancing in commerce and in- 
telligence. Great Britain has in some 
respects the most remarkable history and 
government the world has ever known. 



78 William Ewart Gladstone. 

She stands out conspicuous in the main- 
tenance of personal liberty and free in- 
stitutions, in the origination and secur- 
ing of those invaluable muniments of 
freedom which are incorporated into our 
Federal and State constitutions, in the 
authorship of constitutional kingship, in 
the protection of her citizens, in her ca- 
pacity of colonial government, in her sta- 
ble and incorruptible judicature, in her 
conservatism, in her slow but sure ac- 
ceptance of popular rights, in nearly 
everything that constitutes a free and 
powerful nation. To govern this great 
country is a terrible responsibility, and 
requires statesmanship of the highest or- 
der. 

Three times and for twelve years Mr. 
Gladstone has been Prime Minister, not 
a mere locum teneiis, an empty name, but 
a real bona fide minister, as were Walpole 
and Pitt and Peel. His ministry of 1868- 
1874 has been called the golden age of 
Liberalism. The election of 1874, the 
first general election held under the bal- 
lot, showed a popular verdict in favor of 



Gladstone as Prime Minister. 79 

the Conservatives, and Gladstone went 
to Windsor and tendered to the Queen 
the resignation of himself and colleagues. 
This defeat can scarcely be considered a 
surprise. There had been reform after 
reform, almost to surfeiture, and each 
separate measure clashed with some spe- 
cial interest and slighted the amour propre 
of some section or constituency. Besides, 
the non-conformists, who were the bone 
and sinew of the Liberal party, were 
much offended by the Education act. 
The general election of 1880, including 
the Midlothian campaign, the most re- 
markable in the whole history of popu- 
lar elections in the empire, gave the larg- 
est return of Liberal members to the 
House of Commons that had occurred 
since the daj^s of the first Reform bill. 
Mr. Disraeli, now Lord Beaconsfield, sur- 
rendered the seals of office. The Queen 
sent for Lord Granville and the Marquis 
of Hartington to form a ministry. It is 
well known that personally she does not 
like Mr. Gladstone. He is not complais- 
ant and adulatory, and never conceals 



80 William Ewart Gladstone. 

from her that which he believes to be the 
truth. While scrupulously respectful, 
and bold in protecting her dignity and 
rightful prerogatives, and slioring up the 
crown against assailants, he recognizes 
his true relation, when Prime Minister, 
to the sovereign, his colleagues, the Par- 
liament and the people, and never yields 
a hair's breadth in matters of principle 
and vital to a constitutional government. 
John Bright, replying to Disraeli, who 
had talked of his interviews with the 
Queen with some pompousness, said that 
^' a minister who deceives his sovereign 
is as guilty as the conspirator wdio would 
dethrone her." The noble lords sent for 
would not undertake the formation of a 
government, and frankly told Her Ma- 
jesty that the Prime Minister had been 
designated by the people. Tlie victory 
was not only for Liberalism, but for Mr. 
Gladstone personally, and to have set 
aside or defeated the voice of the people 
would have been impolitic and danger- 
ous. Lord Ronald Gower, in his Remin- 
iscenceSj states that Beaconsfield was ex- 



Gladstone as Prime Minister. 81 

tremely displeased that the succession 
had fallen to Gladstone, and complained 
of Granville and Hartington as deficient 
in spirit. This incident has an import- 
ant constitutional bearing, for the old 
notion of responsibility of the cabinet to 
the crown has lost its potency, and is 
little more than a tradition. The ap- 
pointment of a new ministry, which falls 
provisionally and pro forma on the sov- 
ereign, must be performed '' with the aid 
drawn from authentic manifestations of 
public opinion," such as are obtained 
from a general election, or from votes of 
the House of Commons. In 1834, Wil- 
liam IV dismissed the Melbourne gov- 
ernment, but to preserve the sovereign's 
personal immunity from consequences 
of political acts and to keep him from 
the front of a great struggle, Sir Robert 
Peel, in consenting to take Lord Mel- 
bourne's office, took on himself, ex post 
facto, the royal responsibility. The rash 
and arbitrary act of William IV is not 
likely to be repeated, for it is now settled 

that while under the conservative fictions 
G 



82 William Ewart Gladstone. 

which so abound in English law and in- 
stitutions the Prime Minister is selected 
by the crown, the crown is limited in 
choice to him ^'who may be designated 
by the acclamations of a party majority." 
So, also, in the acceptance of the col- 
leagues who are to constitute the cabi- 
net, the sovereign is limited by the ne- 
cessity that the new administration shall 
command the confidence of the House 
of Commons, and be one with which the 
chief minister shall be able to carry on 
efficiently the business of the country. 

Mr. Gladstone received from the Queen, 
thus foiled, the commission to fornx an 
administration. To select such persons 
as will be useful and agreeable in the 
task of government requires a good deal 
of accommodation and reciprocal con- 
cession. Many elements besides fitness 
for the particular office or signal capa- 
city must enter into the choice. In the 
ministry which came into power was 
an extraordinary array of talent and 
experience, for it comprised such men 
as Selborne, Spencer, Argyll, Granville, 



Gladstone as Prime Minister. 83 

Hartington, Harcourt, Childers, Forster, 
Bright, Chamberlain, Dilke, Fawcett,etc. 
Gladstone rose far above Walpole's beset- 
ting weakness of enduring no really ca- 
pable colleagues. 



CHAPTER V. 

The several departments of state pre- 
sent bills in the shape of estimates for ex- 
penditure during the approaching year. 
These money bills for taxing the people 
must originate in the House of Com- 
mons. These estimates having been laid 
before Parliament, the next step is to 
consider the manner of providing the 
money. The Chancellor of the Exche- 
quer is the officer of state who makes 
proposals on this head, and his annual 
statement is called ^^The Budsfet.'' It is 
thus apparent that the Chancellor of the 
Exchequer superintends the control of 
the public moneys, and has much to do 
with the fiscal policy. 

Gladstone, beyond any man that ever 
lived, has accomplished the impossible 
and squared the circle in finance. He 
has thrown a halo around the science 
and brought it, as well as other great 

[84] 



Gladstone as d Financier. 85 

questions of administration, within the 
popular apprehension. 

In 1852, Disraeli brought forward his 
budget in a speech extending over five 
hours and a quarter. Gladstone, with 
fierce energy and a luminousness that 
admitted no misunderstanding, assailed 
the policy of the finance minister. ^'His 
crushing expose of the blunders of the 
budget was almost ludicrous in its com- 
pleteness, and it was universally felt that 
the scheme could not survive his bril- 
liant onslaught." From this debate be- 
gan that parliamentary duel and political 
antagonism which lasted until the death 
of Disraeli, 19th April, 1881. For thirty 
years these remarkable men w^ere pitted 
against each other in the public mind, 
in the House of Commons, in election 
campaigns, as political rivals, as leaders 
of opposing parties and principles, with- 
out cessation of conflict. The Derby 
ministry being defeated on the budget 
resigned. The Earl of Aberdeen suc- 
ceeding, Gladstone became by universal 
choice Chancellor of the Exchequer. The 



86 William E^art Gladstone. 

Times said: "The session of 1853 will be 
forever remarkable as having first fully 
brought to the attention of the country 
the financial and parliamentary abilities 
of Mr. Gladstone." The coalition cabi- 
net of the Earl of Aberdeen having col- 
lapsed, Lord Palmerston, in February, 
1855, formed a ministry, Gladstone con- 
tinuing as Cliancellor of the Exchequer. 
The Crimean war developed a wide di- 
vergence of views in the cabinet, and 
Mr. Gladstone withdrcAv. In 1859, on 
change of administration, he again be- 
came Chancellor of the Exchequer and 
retained the place under the brief leader- 
ship of Earl Russell. In 1873 and in 
1880, while premier, he for awhile dis- 
charged the duties both of Chancellor of 
the Exchequer and of Prime Minister, 
although in ordinary times the labors of 
either are sufticient to occupy the most 
vigorous minister; but, as said the TimeSy 
^Svhatever maybe thought in other re- 
spects of Mr. Gladstone's political char- 
acter, he is acknowledged by universal 
assent to be the 2:reatest livins: master of 



Gladstone as a Financier, 87 

finance." The duties of the office cor- 
respond to those of the Secretary of the 
Treasury. At the opening of each ses- 
sion, instead of a printed report with ela- 
borate statistical appendixes, the Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer submits a verbal 
statement of receipts and expenditures, 
and lays bare the whole policy of the 
government in references to taxes and 
revenues. This involves necessarily re- 
commendations as to increasing, reduc- 
ing or remitting old taxes and levying 
new ones. It is a discussion of financial 
policy, criticism on the past, suggestion 
as to the future, of the relative advan- 
tages of different methods and subjects 
of taxation, the means of reducing the 
national indebtedness, policy of ^^protec- 
tion" or free trade, the entire scope of 
trade, commerce, currency and finance. 
The conclusion of the speech in 1853, 
submitting the proposals of the govern- 
ment, will illustrate the extent and char- 
acter of the official communication: ^^It 
will be admitted that we have not sought 
to evade the difficulties of the position; 



88 Williavi Ewart Gladstone. 

that we have not concealed those difficul- 
ties either from ourselves or from others; 
that we have not attempted to counteract 
them b}^ narrow or flimsy expedients; 
that we have prepared plans, which, if 
you will adopt them, will go some way 
to close up many vexed financial ques- 
tions, which, if not now settled, may be 
attended with public inconvenience, and 
even with public danger, in future years 
and under less favorable circumstances; 
that we have endeavored, in the plans 
we have now submitted to you, to make 
the path of our successors not more ardu- 
ous but more easy; and I may be per- 
mitted to add, that while we have sought 
to do justice to the great labor commu- 
nity of England by furthering their relief 
from indirect taxation, we have not been 
guided by any desire to put one class 
against another. We have felt that we 
should best maintain our own lionor, best 
meet the views of Parliament, and best 
promote the interests of the country, by 
declining to draw any invidious distinc- 
tion between class and class, by adopting 



Gladstone's First Budget. 89 

it to ourselves as a sacred aim to diffuse 
and distribute the burdens with equal 
and impartial hand ; and we have the 
consolation of believing that by propo- 
sals such as these we contribute, as far 
as in us lies, not only to develop the ma- 
terial resources of the country, but to 
knit the various parts of this great na- 
tion yet more closely than ever to that 
throne and to those institutions under 
which it is our happiness to live." 

The first budget was a revelation to 
the House, the beginning of a new era in 
parliamentary proceedings. For breadth 
of conception, perspicuity in exposition 
of minutest financial details, for grasp 
and mastery of the subject, for command 
and use of the fittest words, for flexi- 
bility and richness of voice that never 
flagged nor faltered during the whole five 
hours, the speech w^as never before sur- 
passed. Instead of inattention, fatigue 
and restlessness, the members and audi- 
tors listened spellbound. 'The impres- 
sion produced was profound and the 
cheering was enthusiastic and prolonged. 



90 William Ewart Gladstone. 

The sentiment of Parliament and of the 
country was that the finances were in 
the control of a master mind, and that 
Turgot, Colbert, Necker, Walpole and 
Peel had their equal, if not their supe- 
rior, in Gladstone. Sir Stafford North- 
cote, a Conservative leader of undoubted 
purity and ability, said of the analysis of 
the income tax, " It is almost impossible 
to condense, so consummate is the skill 
with which the topics are arranged and 
presented;" and of the general character 
of the budget, ''We miss in it the cau- 
tion of the financial plans of Sir Robert 
Peel, while in its place we meet with a 
boldness of conception, a love of effect, 
and a power of producing it, such as 
we do not find even in the remarkable 
budget of 1842." 

This ministry, not content with letting 
things remain as they were, conceived 
bold enterprises. Among them was a re- 
modeling of the customs system, so as to 
get rid of some of its crudities and incon- 
sistencies, and to reform and modernize it 
so as to make it conform to less mediaeval 



Financial Policy. 91 

and antiquated and more advanced and 
philosophical views of the economy of 
finance and ^commerce. The struggle to 
accomplish this continued under many 
varying phases, A few months ago, Mr. 
Gladstone said: ^'No other country has 
struggled, no other country has suffered, 
so much as we have done in order to at- 
tain this great consummation. It tore 
asunder our political parties; it inter- 
rupted the work of legislation; it created 
ill-will, and sometimes went near the 
point of endangering peace before we 
could arrive at the solution of this great 
controversy. But all that experience 
gives us a title to rely on our con- 
clusions." In that hard experience, in 
the years between 1840 and 1862, spent 
upon fighting out the battle, little else 
was done. The Commercial Treaty with 
France in 1860 was one of the most 
memorable triumphs free trade achieved. 
By that treaty France virtually removed 
all prohibitory duties on all staples of 
British manufacture and reduced duties 
on English coal and coke, bar and pig- 



92 William Ewart Gladstone. 

iron, tools, machinery, yarn, flax and 
hemp, and England swept away all du- 
ties on manufactured goods, and reduced 
greatly the duties on foreign wines. One 
of the main authors of that treaty was 
the ^' distinguished statesman, philan- 
thropist and economist,'^ Richard Cob- 
den, ^' not the least among the apostles of 
free trade." When it was determined to 
attempt such a commercial agreement, 
it was as a matter of course that Cob- 
den was invited to conduct the negotia- 
tions. It met with opposition in France 
from Thiers and other protectionists, but 
Napoleon, by an exercise of imperial 
will, imposed it upon his subjects. In 
England it encountered equal resistance. 
The officials resisted the intrusion into 
the diplomatic circles of a parvenu, who 
cared little for the mechanical and con- 
ventional etiquette, the formal and dila- 
tory customs, of diplomacy, if he could 
effect a practical and valuable object in 
a frank, ingenuous and straight-forward 
way. Then Napoleon himself was not 
of royal line, and some of his conduct 



Financial Policy. 93 

had created much dislike and distrust. 
Cobden met with no very cordial help 
from any member of the government ex- 
cept Mr. Gladstone. Pahnerston, while 
not opposing, did not care much about 
the treaty, and afterwards spoke of it as 
a thing rather ridiculous than otherwise. 
Much of the preliminary arrangement 
of the scheme was between Cobden and 
Gladstone, and, according to the testi- 
mony of Cobden 's biographer, it was 
Gladstone's clear comprehension of the 
difficulties which alone rendered possible 
the success of Cobden's labors. The re- 
sults of the treaty were a quickly expand- 
ing and enormous increase in the trade 
between the two countries, to the very 
great advantage and profit of both, and 
a gradual subsidence of the jealousy and 
suspicion which had been the source of 
so much uneasiness and expenditure of 
money. ^' Nearly twenty years ago that 
treaty expired, but although it has ex- 
pired the legislation that was due to it 
remains, almost entirely, I believe, and 
in every particular, untouched. We are 



94 William Ewart Gladstone. 

still enjoying, and France is still enjoy- 
ing," so speaks Mr. Gladstone in May 
last, ^'the vast advantages of that meas- 
ure, which involved on her part a great 
and bold advance towards a svstem of 
free trade. It is a remarkable circum- 
stance, that while the countries round 
her have been moving in the wrong di- 
rection, France, who made this step, has, 
in the main, maintained her ground." 

Macaulay said of Cromwell that never 
was any ruler so conspicuously born for 
sovereignty, and so it seems of Gladstone 
as finance minister. Other budgets of 
varying importance, showing finest con- 
structive achievements in finance, were 
presented in 1856, 1859, 1866 and 1880. 
Some of these encountered embarrass- 
ment from the paralyzation of British 
industry, the arrested commercial pro- 
gress, which were the natural results of 
European and American wars. The lat- 
ter he described as a tempest, ^' perhaps 
the wildest that ever devastated a civ- 
ilized country — a tempest of war, dis- 
tinguished, indeed, by the exhibition of 



Financial Policy. 95 

the most marvelous and extraordinary 
qualities of valor, heroism and persever- 
ance.'' In all these financial statements 
there was shown the minutest familiarity 
with all branches of the public industry 
and the public revenue. There were no 
exaggerations of resources, no errors of 
omission, no crowding by excess nor 
weakening by insufficiency of facts or 
arguments. While the House would be 
packed to the doors and through all its 
approaches, strangers with tickets for 
gallery would sometimes wait seven or 
eight hours in St. Stephen's Hall so as to 
be present at the delivery of one of these 
orations which threw romance into arith- 
metical figures and made finance a fine 
art. Great questions of war or peace, 
of liberty or religion, have inspired the 
masterpieces of human eloquence. It re- 
mained for Gladstone to make a budget 
the occasion for entrancing oratory. 

As we have seen, Gladstone turned 
from his early notions of restrictions and 
rigid protection and gave cordial support 
to Peel in the great fiscal reforms exe- 



96 William Eivart Gladstone. 

cuted during his administration. The 
revised tariff, introduced into the House 
in 1842, in which a total abolition, or 
considerable reduction, of no fewer than 
750 out of 1,200 duty-paying articles took 
place, was largely the work of Gladstone. 
It is not too much to say that to him 
is due no inconsiderable credit for the 
speedy consummation of the free trade 
policy of the. Peel ministry. Under Lord 
Aberdeen he concurred in the announce- 
ment that the mission of the cabinet 
would be to maintain and extend free 
trade principles and to continue Peel's 
commercial and financial system. In 
his first budget, while conceding the po- 
tency of the income tax, as an engine of 
gigantic power for great national pur- 
poses, he said it was not desirable to 
maintain it as a portion of the perma- 
nent and ordinary finances of the coun- 
try. '^ Its inequality was a fact import- 
ant in itself; the inquisition it entailed 
was a most serious disadvantage; and 
the frauds to which it led were evils 
which it was not possible to characterize 



Financial Policy. 97 

in terms too strong." ''Whatever 3^ou 
do in regard to the income tax, you must 
be bold, intelligible, decisive." The gov- 
ernment sought to put an end to the un- 
certainty that prevailed respecting the 
income tax, and to take effectual meas- 
ures for marking it as a temporary meas- 
ure. The wars, entailing heavy and ex- 
ceptional expenditures, interfered with 
his desire for the reduction and final re- 
mission of the income tax, but he never 
relaxed his purpose. The difficulties did 
not make him less constant in his en- 
deavors in the direction of relieving com- 
merce from imposts, and he frequently 
entered into calculations to show that 
remission of taxes had always been ac- 
companied by increase of revenue, con- 
sequent upon increase of trade. North- 
cote, in estimating the general result of 
the financial polic}^ from 1842 to 1861, 
concluded that the condition of every 
portion of the community was greatly 
improved by the new policy. 

In the financial statement of 1864, 
contrasting the strength, stability and 



98 William Ewart Gladstone. 

progress of the United Kingdom under 
the old system of protection witji the 
results under the new system, it is said, 
''The effect of twenty years of free trade 
legislation, inaugurated by Sir Robert 
Peel, and carried on by his successors in 
office, had been such that concurrently 
with the repeal of a long catalogue of 
duties and imposts which had previous- 
ly fettered manufacturers, and excluded 
most valuable foreign products, the finan- 
ces of the country presented an aspect of 
abundance and stability, almost without 
precedent in our history, and to which 
no foreign country could offer a com- 
parison. In point of wealth and na- 
tional credit indeed, England stood al- 
most alone amongst the nations of the 
world." 

In 1876 Gladstone was convinced that 
the time had arrived when Parliament 
should face the subject of the national 
debt, and he suggested that a good plan 
of operating on the debt would be by the 
conversion of perpetual into terminable 
annuities. The proposal excited little 



Financial Policy. 99 

opposition, but a change of the minis- 
try arrested action. From 1856 to 1890 
the national debt was reduced from 
£808,000,000 to £694,000,000. Finan- 
cial legislation in the years 1862-1865 
gave the country a reduction of taxation 
to the extent of £2,276,000 annually. 
In the thirteen years from 1857 to 1878, 
there was a repeal or reduction of taxes 
to the amount of £42,816,329, and an 
increase of £3,080,086, showing a favor- 
able balance of £37,766,263. 

It should not be forgotten that during 
a large portion of the period of Glad- 
stone's fiscal management he was handi- 
capped by uncontrollable adverse causes. 
From the growing wants of the country it 
was a time of growing expenditure. A 
tremulous apprehension, a sense of in- 
security, a panicky pessimism, prevailed 
at times in London and in the rural dis- 
tricts. A battle-of-Dorking fear seized 
many minds. The army and navy es- 
tablishments and immense expenditures 
of the nations on the continent created a 
sort of feeling that England, although 



100 William Ewart Gladstone. 

islanded, must keep pace with these hos- 
tile preparations. Exigencies, like the 
war in China, the conflicts in Africa, the 
wars in Europe, the diplomatic complica- 
tions with the United States, made it im- 
practicable to carry out fully the policy of 
retrenchment and reduced taxation, and 
gave plausibility to arguments against fi- 
nancial and revenue reforms. Gladstone 
might have acquired temporary popular- 
ity by yielding to alkiring temptations, 
l)ut with fixedness he adhered to his con- 
AHctions and labored for the well-being of 
the whole country, of the classes as well 
as of the masses, of the future as well as 
of the fleeting present. He warned Par- 
liament against the system of enormous 
and costly loans, of throwing burdens on 
posterity, of mortgaging the industry of 
future generations. Those who made 
war should bear the sacrifices it entailed, 
as this would restrain vaulting ambition, 
the lust of conquest, and incline to early 
peace. National crises should be met as 
they arise, and Parliament should not 
set the pestilent example of abolishing 



Financial Policy. 101 

taxes and borrowing money in their 
stead. He deprecated the ''proneness 
to constant and ahiiost boundless aug- 
mentations of expenditure and the con- 
sequences associated with them/' and 
he persistently enforced the duty and 
the necessity of guarding against extra- 
vagance and of reducing expenditures. 
His constant aim w^as to lower the public 
charges, to keep within the estimates, 
to lessen taxation and the public debt. 
He affirmed that he w^ould not share in 
the responsibility of a government which 
did not, on every occasion, seek to en- 
large its resources by a wise economy, 
and hence, in 1878, he wrote of the great 
duty, '' unfortunately neglected, of pre- 
paring by a resolute and steady effort 
to reduce public burdens, in preparation 
for a day when we shall probably have 
less capacity than w^e now have to bear 
them." The right and sound principle 
is to estimate expenditure liberaliv, to 
estimate revenue carefully, to make each 
year pay its own expenses, and to take 
care that your charge is not greater than 



102 William Ewart Gladstone. 

your income. In 1859, he found an 
empty exchequer, heavy burdens on the 
nation and a deficit of £5,000,000. In 
1861, he reduced the income tax and 
abolished the paper duty; in 1863, re- 
lieved the country of taxes to the amount 
of £3,340,000; in 1864, of another £3,000- 
000 of taxes, and in 1866 reached the cul- 
minating point of a remission of £5,420- 
000. In 1874, he handed over the most 
flourishing revenue ever turned over by 
a Parliament to its successor and a sur- 
plus of £6,000,000. 
*^ Gladstone has no sympathy -with the 
assumption on the part of government 
to regulate industries and direct invest- 
ments, — an undertaking economically 
false and otherwise full of perplexity 
and danger. He thinks it wisest and 
best for every man to deal with whom 
and where he pleases, so long as he does 
not infringe upon the equal right of 
another. It is a gross perversion of the 
legitimate functions of government to 
use the taxing power for other purposes 
than the raising of money for an eco- 



Financial Policy. 103 

nomical administration. It should never 
be used to create monopolies, to cre- 
ate special privileges, to discriminate be- 
tween citizens or classes of citizens, to 
provide funds for control of elections, to 
regulate prices, to benefit favored inter- 
ests or employments. Chiefly through 
his leadership the customs tariff was so 
reformed, so nearly abolished, that in- 
stead of a tax on 1,200 articles (our tariff 
comprises 2,172 dutiable articles) more 
revenue has been obtained from ten or a 
dozen articles, on which duties are levied 
strictly to meet fiscal necessities. In one 
of his recent Midlothian speeches, he 
says: /'About fifty years ago the differ- 
ent trades were in a state of alarm and 
horror at the changes that were threat- 
ened, which they said portended to them 
absolute ruin. Nothing could be more 
doleful than their pr5spects. You know 
that the result of the abolition of pro- 
tection has been that, instead of ruin and 
destruction, the trade of the country has 
been multiplied about five times over, 
that the population of the country has 



104 William Eivart Gladstone. 

fully doubled, and it has not only doubled 
in numbers but has been enormously 
raised in material condition, and I re- 
joice to think in social, political and 
moral condition also. Though the na- 
tional opinion of this country is in favor 
of free trade, yet we have among us a 
certain number of people who believe 
that the injurious effects of protection 
are chiefly felt by the countries that deal 
with the protected country. Now, that 
I believe to be fundamentally a mistake. 
I do not mean to sav that there are not 
injurious effects, or that there is not a 
great deal of displacement and disturb- 
ance, and what I may call demoraliza- 
tion of trade and inconveniences felt by 
individuals, and even by classes; but tak- 
ing a larger view, it is not true that at any 
time the tariff of any country on earth 
can interfere seriously with the prosper- 
ity of Great Britain or the United King- 
dom. "^ ^ ^ The amount of our colonial, 
our imperial, commerce is £187,000,000 
in the year, taking imports and exports 
of all descriptions of goods together; but 



Financial Policy. 105 

the amount of our foreign commerce is 
£554,000,000 in the year. Now, gentle- 
men, I think 3'ou will recognize at once 
that it would be a doubtful — or, rather, 
not at all a doubtful — -policy, a great deal 
worse than doubtful policy, a most inglo- 
rious policy, to clog the action of British 
energy and enterprise on a market of 
£554,000,000 in the year, even for the pur- 
pose of enlarging our action on a market 
of one-third portion of the amount." 



CHAPTER XL 

Reserving some subjects for separate 
consideration, there may profitably be 
grouped some of the more memorable 
acts of leoislation which were matured 
during Mr. Gladstone's three adminis- 
trations, or while he was Chancellor of 
the Exchequer. The spirit with Avhich 
he serves his country may be gathered 
from an utterance in one of his Midlo- 
thian speeches, when he avows his fond 
and proud attachment to the '"great em- 
pire Avhicli has committed to it a trust 
and a function given from Providence 
as special and remarkable as ever was 
entrusted to any portion of the family 
of man. I feel, when I speak of that 
trust and function, that words fail me; 
I cannot tell you what I think of the 
nobleness of the inheritance that has de- 
scended upon us, of the sacredness of 
the duty of maintaining it. It is a part 
of my being, of my flesh and blood, of 

[106] 



Statesmanship. 107 

my heart and soul. For those ends I 
have labored through my 3^outh and 
manhood till my hairs are grey. In 
that faith and practice I have lived; in 
that faith and practice I will die.^' 

In general legislation, Gladstone's pol- 
icy has been far-seeing, and the welfare 
of the nation has been his paramount 
aim. Time has vindicated the reforms 
he has accomplished, and it is claimed 
that the initiative of policy, in almost 
every instance, both legislative and ad- 
ministrative, for fifty years, has been sup- 
plied by the Liberal party. The policy 
which at present governs every depart- 
ment of the state is a part of a legacy 
left by the Liberal government. Under 
Gladstone's leadership have been ma- 
tured such enactments as the Endowed 
Schools Bill, Habitual Criminals Bill, 
Ballot Bill, Elementary Education Act, 
the University Tests Bill, the Ecclesiasti- 
cal Titles Act, the Trades Unions Bill, 
the Affirmation Bill, the Compensation 
for Disturbance Bill, and others of equal 
importance. 



108 William Ewart Gladstone. 

Mr. Chamberlain, in a speech at Bir- 
mingham, June 3, 1875, sums up the 
work of the government of 1880-1885, of 
which he Avas a member. ^^ When Ave 
came into power everything Avas changed. 
There Avas trouble all over the world. 
South Africa Avas in a state of anarchv; 
there had been war, shortly to be re- 
neAved, in Afghanistan; Ireland Avas dis- 
satisfied, and on the eve of the greatest 
agitation Avhich has ever convulsed that 
country since the time of the tithe Avar; 
the finances Avere in hopeless confusion. 
And yet in spite of all these things, and 
in spite of obstruction carried Avith the 
tacit approA^al of the Tory party up to 
the height of a science, and in spite of 
the most factious opposition that I be- 
lieve this country has ever knoAvn, there 
has not been a single session that has 
passed Avithout measures of important 
reform finding their place in the statute 
book,Avithout grievances being redressed, 
and Avrongs being remedied. We have 
abolished flogging in the army; Ave have 
suspended the operation of the odious 



Statesmanship. 109 

acts called the Contagious Diseases Acts; 
we have amended the Game Laws; we 
have reformed the Burial Laws; we have 
introduced and carried an Employers' 
Liability Bill; we have had a Bankruptcy 
Act, a Patents Act, and a host of second- 
ary measures wdiich together would have 
formed the stock-in-trade of a Tor}^ gov- 
ernment for twenty years at least. And, 
gentlemen, these are the fringe only, the 
outside of the more important legislation 
of our time, the chief elements in Avliich 
have been the Irish Land Bill, and the 
Beform Bill. The Irish Land Bill alone 
is a monument of Mr. Gladstone's genius ; 
and he was probably the only man who 
could have successfully dealt with so 
gigantic, so complicated, and so difficult 
a subject. But he has passed two great 
measures dealing wath that subject, giv- 
ing to the Irish tenant full security of 
tenure, and now, at all events, he en- 
jo3:s in its entirety all the improvements 
which he may make in his holding." 

Specific mention will now be made of 
some measures, and afterwards a larger 



110 William Ewart Gladstone. 

discussion will be given of a few more 
important questions in order to present 
a better view of Gladstone as a patriot 
and a statesman. 

By an order in council, all entrance 
appointments to situations in all civil de- 
partments of the state, except the Foreign 
Office and posts requiring professional 
knowledge, were to be filled by open 
competition. The half-penny postage 
for newspapers was instituted, and the 
half-penny card w^as introduced in Octo- 
ber, 1871. In 1873 there were delivered 
76,000,000 postal cards; in 1889, 201,250,- 
000. The royal prerogative which as- 
serted that the General Commanding-in- 
Chief was the agent of the crown has 
been abolished, and that distinguished 
personage and high military officer has 
been formally declared to be a subordi- 
nate of the Ministei^ of War, and there- 
fore responsible to the House of Com- 
mons. 

In the budget of 1860, Gladstone pro- 
posed the abolition of the excise duty on 
paper. The materials which the duty 



Paper Duty. Ill 

affected entered largely into manufac- 
tured products, for everything fibrous 
could be converted into paper, which 
was extensively used in sixty-nine trades. 
The duty had closed all the small mills 
and the manufacture of paper was in the 
hands of two or three monopolists. It 
was also proposed to abolish the im- 
pressed stamp on ncAvspapers. This an- 
cient system of British finance pressed 
heavily on journalism. Taxes were im- 
posed on each number of the paper is- 
sued, on advertisements, on the paper 
material. This was practically a tax on 
the difiusion of intelligence and made 
the newspaper too costly for general cir- 
culation. The government sought to 
abolish both excise and impost duty and 
to establish, so far as England was con- 
cerned, entire free trade in that commo- 
dity. The underlying scheme of Glad- 
stone's reformed financial policy was the 
reduction of duties on articles of popu- 
lar consumption, the abolition of protec- 
tion, and the liberation of trade. Such 
proposals aioused the '' protected" paper 



112 William Ewart Gladstone. 

monopolists, the makers of the ''silver 
shrines/' and they demanded an import 
duty on French paper to enable English 
paper makers to get a higher price than 
if free importation of paper from France 
were allowed. The usual cry of interests 
based upon artificial privileges was raised, 
that releasing consumers from contribu- 
tion to private interests meant commu- 
nism, republicanism, dependence on for- 
eign nations. The Lords rejected tlie 
measure after it had passed the House. 
Then came one of the gravest constitu- 
tional crises. Twenty years afterwards, 
Gladstone said: ''I have been through 
many political struggles, but never one 
so severe as the struggle to attain to the 
repeal of the paper duties." The Lords 
had chosen to assume to themselves the 
power of dictating to the House of Com- 
mons and of saying that the country 
could not spare such a remission of taxa- 
tion. The House, on motion of Lord 
Palmerston, declared, ''That the right of 
granting aids and supplies to the crown 
is in the Commons alone, as an essential 



Purchase of Commissions. 113 

part of their constitution, and the limi- 
tation of all such grants as to matter, 
manner, measure and time, is only in 
them." To circumvent the House of 
Lords and to avert a constitutional con- 
flict between the two Houses, Gladstone 
included all the chief financial proposi- 
tions of the budget in one bill instead of 
dividing them into several distinct bills. 
This bold course of an ''.old parliament- 
ary hand '^ was denounced as an innova- 
tion and as ''Americanized finance," but 
a great variety of precedents, showing 
the combination of different provisions 
in the same financial measure, was ad- 
duced. It was besides insisted that to 
originate matters of finance was the ex- 
clusive right and duty and burden of the 
House of Commons, and that to divide 
the function between two distinct and 
independent bodies would lead to utter 
confusion. 

. For many years a practice had pre- 
vailed in the British army of the sale of 
commissions by officers who were tired 
of the service or wished to compound in 
8 



114 William Ewart Gladstone. 

a definite sum the compensation Avhich 
they would likely receive if they con- 
tinued in service. The system of pur- 
chase was even the subject of regulation 
and had grown by excess of regulation 
prices into a flagrant evil. In 1871, the 
Minister of War, in moving the annual 
army estimates, proposed the abolition 
of the purchase system, but accompanied 
his scheme by a system of retirement 
and promotion by selection, as well as by 
the payment of a large sum of money as 
compensation. After a fixed day no pe- 
cuniary interest would be taken b}^ any 
one in any new commission, but no offi- 
cer w^as to sufi'er loss by tlie abolition of 
purchase. First commissions were to be 
given to the general public by competi- 
tive examination, to subalterns of mili- 
tia regiments after two years' good ser- 
vice, and to non-commissioned officers. 
Under the old system such favoritism 
and abuses had grown up that Havelock 
stated that two fools and three sots had 
purchased over him. The reform was re- 
sisted — when was a reform ever easy ? — 



Purchase of Commissions. 115 

and was criticised as a sop to democracy. 
The object of the government was to 
sweep away the whole system of purchase 
and attract the best men into the army. 
The House of Lords rejected the bill, but 
Gladstone discovered an unexpected but 
effectual wav out of the difficultv. He 
advised the Queen to take the decisive 
step of cancelling the royal warrant under 
which the purchase was legal. This un- 
usual method was resorted to for simpli- 
city and despatch and the termination of 
a state of suspense, that the British army 
should be worthy of the British nation, 
should have the best men and the best 
officers, and that the whole position of the 
officers might be susceptible of improve- 
ment whenever it was needed. For this 
exercise of prerogative the Lords passed 
a vote of censure, but Gladstone, rejoicing 
tliat in a single session a task so formid- 
able had been accomplished, appealed to 
the public opinion of the country for his 
exculpation. On the substantial wisdom 
of the act all are now agreed. 



CHAPTER VII. 

No struggle for enlargement of popular 
liberty encountered more active, persist- 
ent and virulent opposition than the ef- 
fort to enlarge suffrage and correct the in- 
equalities of representation. Before 1832 
the parliamentary system was an anom- 
al V an d a c ar i c atur e . Sy d n e v S m i t h s a i d 
that at the advent of the Edinburgh Re- 
view it was considered impertinent for a 
man of less than £2,000 a year to have 
any opinion at all on important subjects. 

The svstem included, said Gladstone, 
every variety of franchise from pure 
nomination by an individual down or up 
to household suffrage; say from zero to 
what is deemed infinitv. Seventv mem- 
bers were returned by private nomina- 
tion; ninety by forty-six places under 
fifty voters each, while towns from 33,000 
to 133,000 inhabitants had no represen- 
tatives. The passage of the Refoi-m Bill 
of 1832 marked one of the greatest con- 

[116] 



The Parliamentary System. 117 

stitutioiial battles recorded, in parliamen- 
tary history, because it was a transforma- 
tion of the electoral arrangements of the 
United Kingdom. This Magna Cliarta 
of British liberties, as it was considered 
and called, was but the entering wedge, 
for less than half a million were added 
to the entire constituency of the three 
countries. It Avas defective in that it 
left the great body of the working classes 
outside any direct participation in the 
government. It made the political power 
of the state the partnership of two great 
classes, and established a principle which 
made advance possible, but it disap- 
pointed those who found themselves not 
better off but even worse off as regards 
the franchise than they had been be- 
fore."^ A further extension forced itself 
upon the public attention. With the 
Whigs the principle generally was heart- 
ily adopted. The Tories gave a procras- 
tinating repulse er a reluctant assent. 
In 1851, 1852 and 1853 there were tenta- 
tive and feeble efforts at reform. In 

*See McCarthy's Epoch o/Beform, chapters IT- VI. 



118 William Ewart Gladstone. 

1859, in deference to the unmistakable 
expression of the popular will, the Derby 
government introduced through Disraeli 
a scheme resting upon the principle of 
property joined with population. Glad- 
stone announced that he could not be a 
party to the disfranchisement of the 
county freeholders in boroughs, nor to a 
Reform bill which did not lower the 
suffrage in boroughs. The Whigs op- 
posed because it did not provide for a 
greater extension. The government was 
defeated, and in the new Parliament 
Lord John Russell introduced a Reform 
bill which Gladstone supported, but from 
want of time to pass through both houses 
during the session it was withdrawn. In 
1864 and 1866, inclusive, there was a 
rapid development of Gladstone's views, 
and his speeches excited alarm in the 
Conservative party and corresponding 
elation in the Reform party. In the 
great reform debate of the latter year he 
closed an address with a strong appeal, 
trusting that the issue would be taken 
plainly and directly upon the question 



Debate on Reform Measures. 119 

whether there is or is not to be an en- 
franchisement downwards. ''We have 
felt that to carry enfranchisement above 
the present line was essential to charac- 
ter, to credit, to usefulness; essential to 
the character and credit not merely of 
the government, not merely of the politi- 
cal party by which it has the honor to be 
represented, but of this House and of the 
successive Parliaments and governments, 
who all stand pledged with respect to this 
question of the representation. We can- 
not consent to look upon this large addi- 
tion, considerable although it may be, to 
the political power of the w^orking classes 
of this country, as if it were an addition 
fraught with mischief and with danger. 
* * I believe that these persons whom 
we ask you to enfranchise ought rather to 
be welcomed as you would welcome re- 
cruits to your army or children to your 
family. We ask you to give within what 
you consider to be the just limits of pru- 
dence and circumspection, but having 
once determined those limits, to give with 
an ungrudging hand. Consider what you 



120 William Ewart Gladstone. 

can safely and justly afford to do in ad- 
mitting new subjects and citizens within 
the pale of the parliamentary constitu- 
tion, and do not perform the act as if you 
were compounding with danger and mis- 
fortune. Do it as if you were conferring 
a boon that will be felt and reciprocated 
in grateful attachment. Give to these 
persons new interests in the constitution, 
new interests which, bv the beneficent 
processes of the law of nature and of 
Providence, shall beget in them new at- 
tachrment; for the attachment of the peo- 
ple to the throne, the institutions and the 
laws under which they live is, after all, 
more than gold and silver, or more than 
fleets and armies, at once the strength, 
the glory and the safety of the land.'' 

Through the defection of the ''Adulla- 
mites," a name given by Mr. Bright to 
those of the party who withheld their 
support from the government, the bill 
was defeated by a majority of five, amid 
frantic hurrahs such as had never been 
heard in the House of Commons. In 
the course of a vear Earl Derby's gov- 



Debate on Reform, Measures. 121 

ernment found itself compelled to rein- 
troduce the very question of reform whose 
defeat had been hailed with such intoxi- 
cation of joy. Immense demonstrations, 
clamorous for an extension of the fran- 
chise, had been held in Hyde Park, and 
Disraeli, yielding to the popular feel- 
ing, brought in his scheme and disclosed 
it with much fulness. Gladstone, than 
whom, John Bright said, no one had im- 
ported into the reform question so much 
conviction, zeal, earnestness, courage, elo- 
quence, threw himself heart and soul into 
the discussion and the perfecting of the 
measure, and was so conspicuous that the 
present Prime Minister charged Disraeli 
with a 'Apolitical betrayal which has no 
parallel in our parliamentary annals,'' 
and Lord Cranborne, a member of the 
government, described the bill as the 
triumph of Gladstone, at whose '^ dicta- 
tion" it had been ''modified" by the 
lodger franchise, by a provision to pre- 
vent traffic in votes, by the omission of 
the dual vote and of the taxing franchise, 
by a fifty per cent, enlargement of the 



122 William Eivart Gladstone. 

distribution of seats, by the reduction of 
the county, the educational and the sav- 
ings-bank franchises, and by the omis- 
sion of voting papers. Through the ex- 
tension of suffrage by this and subsequent 
bills to householders in towns and coun- 
ties the total constituency of the king- 
dom was raised to 2,448,000. 

The year 1884 will be memorable 
among other achievements for the intro- 
duction of the Franchise Bill, whereby 
the base of the parliamentary vote was 
widened to an extent which would have 
crazed the pessimists of 1832. Two mil- 
lions of people were enfranchised, twice 
as many as had been added since 1867, 
and more than four times as many as were 
added in 1832. These acts set the seal 
on the great change which the Reform 
Act of Lord Grey inaugurated. " The 
government of the people by the people, 
imperfectly recognized as the principle 
of the first attempt to improve the par- 
liamentary representation, has been at 
last effectively secured by the two mea- 
sures which together constitute the great 



Franchise Bill. 123 

achievement of Mr. Gladstone's second 
administration. At last the majority of 
the nation will be represented by a ma- 
jority of the House of Comrrions, and 
ideas and wants and claims which have 
been hitherto ignored in legislation will 
find a voice in Parliament, and will com- 
pel the attention of statesmen.""^ The 
principal and central idea of the scheme 
was to give every householder a vote and 
to unite the three kingdoms in one mea- 
sure and essentially in one and the same 
franchise. It provided a service fran- 
chise, and thus made a four-fold occupa- 
tion or householding franchise, including 
artisans who Avere neither owners nor 
tenants, but in a sense householders. 
Chamberlain declared that '^ihe greatest 
constitutional reform since the Revolu- 
tion of 1688 has been carried through. 
The Tories opposed it, as they have op- 
posed every measure of reform, as long 
as they have dared, and until they saw 
the passions of the people were aroused, 

* Preface to The Radical Programme^ by J. Cham- 
berlain, M. P. 



124 William Ewart Gladstone. 

so that it would be dangerous to resist 
any longer. They opposed it and at- 
tempted to delay it, attempted to min- 
imize it; and now, with characteristic ef- 
frontery, they are taking the credit for 
the passage of a measure which, if their 
power had been equal to their will, we 
should never have seen upon the statute 
book of the land." The proposition to 
deal with the artisans as the middle class 
had been dealt with summoned from their 
graves all the old terrors and bug-bears; 
but it was found that the artisan was not 
a perilous subject, and that he could be 
safely trusted as a constituent meniber 
of the state. No evil effect to the non- 
laboring class w^as produced, as for the en- 
largement of national power it is needful 
to look to liberty. Talent and character 
are not limited to the '' better born," and 
the more closely and the more largely the 
''power of human will, understanding and 
affections can be placed in association 
with the main-springs of the state," the 
more will the vital power be augmented. 
Opponents regarded the enfranchisement 



F/'anchise Bill. 125 

as ail evil, multiplying risks and sliocks. 
Gladstone regarded the admission of move 
capable men to the francliise as a posi- 
tive good, l)roadening downwards, in- 
creasing the sum total of forces enlisted 
in the nation's interest. 

Tlius, tlie laws fixed, as conditions un- 
der which a man of full age became en- 
titled to vote, a household qualification, 
an occupation qualification, a service and 
a lodging qualification, and some others. 
It Avas necessary to provide the machiner}^ 
for the exercise of the franchise and to 
establish in the case of each individual 
the possession of the qualifications. The 
newly enfranchised voters became en- 
titled to be placed on the register and 
to enjoy this essential process Avith cer- 
tainty, simplicity and the smallest possi- 
ble expenditure of personal labor and of 
money. 

After passing a Franchise bill the pass- 
ing of a bill for the redistribution of seats, 
for gathering the electors into Avell-defined 
local communities, Avas a logical duty and 
necessity. ''The strength of the modern 



126 William Eivart Gladstone. 

state lies in the representative system." 
Party policy in districting states and 
municipalities has corrupted American 
politics and given rise to a new name — 
gerrymandering — to designate the new 
thing. Distribution is always compli- 
cated with inherent difficulties, but in 
Great Britain there had been tolerated 
anomalies which were in defiance of all 
justice and sound principle. Theoreti- 
cally it might be maintained that the 
population should be divided into dis- 
tricts or numbers, which should draw a 
proportional representation on a pure 
population scale; but government is a 
practical matter, and it has been found 
better to recognize borough and munici- 
pal limits and secure electoral equality 
as far as was attainable with these local 
divisions. Again, franchise and distri- 
bution were not determinable by the same 
considerations. Gladstone Avas of opin- 
ion that in a sound measure of redistri- 
bution tlie distinction between town and 
country, known to electoral law as bor- 
ough and shire, ought to be maintained. 



Distribution. 127 

In pursuits, associations, and in social 
circumstances, there might be a difference 
between town and country, between bor- 
ough and shire, which it was expedient 
and useful to maintain. He was also dis- 
posed to admit that very large and closely- 
concentrated populations need not have, 
and perhaps ought not to have, quite so 
high a proportional share in the repre- 
sentation of the country as rural and 
dispersed populations, because the ac- 
tual political power in these concentrated 
masses is sharper, quicker and more ve- 
hement. Jn his judgment, legislation 
on the franchise should be followed by 
a large measure of redistribution. The 
Conservatives insisted upon joining the 
two in one bill. A bill for the combined 
purpose involved defeat of the ministry 
as had occurred in 1866, and he was not 
such an ''idiot and dolt " as to walk into 
that trap, and especially in view of the 
fact that of ''the three political crises 
produced in connection with reform leg- 
islation every one has been produced by 
redistribution and not one bv the fran- 



128 William Ewart Gladstone. 

chise." The principles of redistribution, 
or apportionment, were finally agreed on 
in a very unusual way. Lord Salisbury 
had got the House of Lords into a diffi- 
culty by forcing it into antagonism witli 
the House of Commons on the question 
of the precedence of redistribution over 
franchise, and he got out of it by con- 
senting to enter into a friendly agree- 
ment with Mr. Gladstone. The country 
was convulsed by popular agitation ; tlie 
houses of Parliament had been summoned 
for an autumn sitting, and had been some 
time at their work when negotiations 
were opened between the leaders of the 
two great parties. Lord Salisbury and 
Sir Stafford Northcote, in the delibera- 
tions which followed, represented the 
Oonservatives, and Gladstone, Marquis 
of Hartington and Sir Charles Dilke did 
that office for the Liberals. The Conser- 
vatives were permitted to see the draft 
scheme of redistribution which a com- 
mittee, nominated by the cabinet, had 
drawn up, and suggestions from them 
were not only accepted but welcomed. 



Distribution. 129 

As the result of this conference and un- 
derstanding the Lords gave way, the Fran- 
chise bill became a law, the Redistribu- 
tion bill was read a second time in the 
House of Commons, passed through com- 
mittee in the House of Lords, and Parlia- 
ment quietly adjourned until February, 
1886. From this conciliatory action, this 
mode of legislation by private contract, 
came the Franchise, Redistribution and 
Registration acts. In March, 1867, Salis- 
bury resigned office because the Reform 
bill, assented to by Disraeli and Derby, 
was too democratic a measure, a perilous 
transfer of political power, but these mea- 
sures made a vastly greater change. The 
adoption in counties, as well as in the 
largest and smallest boroughs, of electo- 
ral districts, returning one member each, 
was an arrangement of political power 
which the country has generally ap- 
proved. Sir Charles Dilke, on whom the 
main burden of the redistribution nego- 
tiations fell, and to whose knowledge and 
tact the smooth passage of the Franchise 
bill was due, in an address before the 
9 



130 William Ewart Gladstone. 

London Liberal Club, after Gladstone had 
made a communication to the Queen of 
the views of his colleagues and himself, 
speaking of the question of redistribution 
as one which lay at the very root of the 
English politics of the future, and of the 
large change carried into law, said: ^' But 
that change is one the magnitude of which 
I believe it is impossible to over-estimate. 
It is impossible to over-state the increased 
interest in public affairs which it will 
bring to every portion of our land, the 
increased opportunities of service to the 
state, and consequent increase of strength 
to the state, that it will confer by bring- 
ing up the services of new men, by call- 
ing into Parliament, in connection with 
the other reforms that have been passed, 
men who perhaps but for this would not 
have come there, and whose services to 
the state will be of the utmost moment 
to the state." • 

Marked as have been the reforms in 
suffrage and apportionment, abuses in 
the system of popular representation re- 
main which the Liberal party is pledged 



Present System of Representation. 131 

to correct. The principle of Liberalism 
is that in a wise and just government the 
greatest number of intelligent and inde- 
pendent men should have an equal share 
in the administration of the country. 
The diversity between the actual popula- 
tion in the United Kingdom and the en- 
rolled electors is great. Of 8,000,000 
families some two and a half millions are 
unrepresented, and the enrollment is de- 
ceptive, for constituencies are enlarged 
by duplicated qualifications. Some vot- 
ers in one place are also voters at other 
places. Land owners are privileged to 
vote in respect of ownership of property 
in places where they do not reside. These 
plural votes of an absentee class can turn 
elections. By unfair adjustment of rep- 
resentation in the House of Commons, 
large masses of voters, or people, are 
denied their proportionate influence in 
shaping the national policy. Twenty- 
three constituencies, with a population of 
410,000, return twenty-three members to 
Parliament, whilst seven others, whose 
total population is more than 610,000, re- 



132 William Ewart Gladstone. 

turn only seven members. The electoral 
body of the universities consists of 35,000 
people and has nine members. The Rt. 
Hon. Sir G. O. Trevelyan has made very 
prominent his advocacy of ^' one man one 
vote/^ and the Liberal party, in a Parlia- 
ment controlled by them, would doubtless 
demand, in addition, residential suffrage, 
improved registration, grouping of the 
smaller constituencies, greater uniform- 
ity or equality of electoral districts, and 
possibly the abolition of the university 
seats. Mr. Gladstone has indicated as a 
sample of their practical intentions ''a 
bill to clear away the obstacles which 
hinder or delay qualified voters from 
coming upon the register, and to limit, 
on the register, every single citizen to a 
single vote." 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Diplomacy, in modern times, has ac- 
quired a new meaning. It no longer, as 
applied to intercourse between foreign 
nations, signifies deception, trickery, am- 
biguous language, a purpose irrespec- 
tive of means to gain an advantage for 
one's country. Formerly one associated 
with a diplomatist secret influence, wily 
manoeuvring, something Machiavellian, 
Talleyrandish. '^ Secret service money," 
which now lingers in our appropriation 
bills, with some capability of proper uses, 
is suggestive rather as a relic of back- 
stairs influence, of ways that are dark 
and mean. The autonomy and independ- 
ence of nations, the benefit of reciprocal 
commercial intercourse, the arts of peace, 
and other causes, make wars less frequent 
and treaties open and public. The peo- 
ple as an element in government has 
transformed diplomacy. In 1735, the 
royal speech had not one single word 

[133] 



134 William Ewart Gladstone. 

which had to do v/ith the internal condi- 
tion of England or the daily lives of the 
people. Non-committal and jejune as 
are now the speeches from the throne, 
they must have some relation to home 
affairs. Family compacts such as, from 
1733 on for years, were made for the su- 
premacy of the Bourhons of Versailles 
and Madrid, are now unknown. In the 
Holy Alliance and such like engagements, 
conspiracies of despots against the liber- 
ties of mankind, the people were neither 
ocnsulted nor regarded. Their welfare 
and the safety of the country were subor- 
dinated to the succession of the royal 
families and the comfort of the courts. 

Gladstone, in the various ministries 
with which he has been connected, has 
never assumed the portfolio for Foreign 
Affairs, nor has he been specially distin- 
guished for labors or achievements in this 
department of statesmanship. Some gen- 
eral principles of action he has announced 
and acted on. Burke, in his speech on 
conciliation with America, said: ''Mag- 
nanimity in politics is not seldom the 



Foreign Affairs. 135 

truest wisdom ; a great empire and little 
minds go ill together." Not to ignore the 
honor and interests of other countries in 
dealings with them has been Gladstone's 
policy, and he does not believe that the 
interests of England are so concerned in' 
European struggles and successions as to 
justify constant interference, large na- 
tional expenditures and the superfluous 
shedding of English blood. " Madam/' 
said Walpole to Queen Caroline, boast- 
fully, ^Hhere are fifty thousand men slain 
this year in Europe, and not one Eng- 
lishman among them." In 1880, when 
charges were made against Austria con- 
ditionally, they were withdrawn, when 
the conditions were shown not to exist, 
although such procedure was represented 
as a national humiliation. It is a melan- 
choly illustration of human depravity 
that wars are nearly always popular. 
Unprincipled demagogues have found it 
conducive to cheap fame to foster national 
antipathies, inflame sectional hates and 
fire the public heart by incendiary ap- 
peals. '' Jingoism " is a tolerably sure 



136 William Eiuart Gladstone. 

method of bolstering a failing party. 
Lust for war seems to be an ineradica- 
ble national passion. The statesman who 
dares to stand up in favor of his country's 
doing justice to a foreign people, to the 
nation's foe, is sure to be calumniated as 
wanting in patriotism or courage. 

The territory of Transvaal, in South 
Africa, had been annexed in 1877 by 
Lord Carnarvon, then at the head of the 
Colonial Office, on the condition of its 
being agreeable to the white population, 
the Boers. The effort to annex the ter- 
ritor}^, to extinguish freedom, encoun- 
tered unanimous and belligerent opposi- 
tion. With a British force on the ground, 
capable of crushing the peo23le of Trans- 
nvaal, the governmet decided that the 
time of strength was the time to be mer- 
ciful, and in 1881 arrangements, dictated 
by honor and policy, were made by Mr. 
Gladstone to correct the unfortunate blun- 
der, to repair the seeming breach of faith 
on the part of the previous government, 
and to restore independence. The acqui- 
sition was not expedient because it Avas 



Bismarck and Gladstone. 137 

not just. In the same year Greece re- 
ceived additions of territory in Thes- 
saly and Epirus, for which she cherishes 
the warmest gratitude towards Mr. Glad- 
stone. 

A comparison is frequently 'instituted 
between Germany's great Chancellor and 
England's great Commoner. The gov- 
ernments of their respective countries 
are so different, the personal and mental 
characteristics of the two men are so un- 
like, and the condition and needs of Ger- 
many and Great Britain so variant, that 
it is idle speculation as to what one or the 
other statesman could have done if posi- 
tions had been reversed. With a sover- 
eign of more force of character or mas- 
culinity of mind, with a constitutional 
government where the military power was 
subordinate to the civil, Bismarck may 
not have achieved fame, and with his 
environments Gladstone would probably 
have been a failure. Their temperaments 
and moral make-up are as different as 
their surroundings. In Bismarck's deal- 
ings with Napoleon his unscrupulousness 



138 William Ewart Gladstone. 

and contempt for his antagonist shone 
forth conspicuously. He played with the 
weaknesses of " the man of destiny/' and 
when ends were attained flung him aside 
contemptuously. He seems ignorant of 
or indifferent to moral forces. In dip- 
lomacy as formerly practised he is an 
adept, combining cunning, shrewdness, 
patience, impudence, and ability to use 
men and nations against one another. 
With consummate wisdom he secured an 
united Germany for the foreseen conflict 
with France, and afterwards made the 
triple alliance with Austria and Italy to 
checkmate Russia and France in coali- 
tion. In economical and financial mat- 
ters, despite his extraordinary genius as 
a diplomatist and a strategist, he has 
displayed neither special aptitude nor 
knowledge. 

Instead of a ''glory and gun-powder" 
policy, Gladstone has aimed to establish 
a general sympathy with orderly and 
constitutional freedom throughout the 
whole world as the best security for peace 
and justice and the best guarant}^ against 



Bismarck and Gladstone. 139 

the violence of mad revolution. Inter- 
vention in the affairs of continental Eu- 
rope hy force of arms he has discoun- 
tenanced except as an extreme resort, 
and has sought rather to accept and work 
upon the principles which have been de- 
scribed as more peaceful and more just. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Reference has been made to consti- 
tutional crises when the House of Lords 
set itself, with un^delding adherence to 
its opinions, against the clearly expressed 
will of the House of Commons on mea- 
sures of important governmental policy. 
By yielding, or by parliamentary or leg- 
islative expedients, an undesirable con- 
flict has been evaded. Still the relations 
of different ministers to the House of 
Lords indicate clearly the wide diver- 
gence of views as to the deference to be 
shown to the aristocratic and hereditary 
branch of Parliament. It may be safely 
stated that if the Liberals were in power 
there would be an organic change in the 
House of Peers, so as to deprive it of its 
hereditary and episcopal character, or 
make it cease to be a co-ordinate or co- 
equal legislative body. In one of his 
late speeches Lord Salisbury said the re- 
lations of the two Houses have been se- 

[140] 



The House of Lords. 141 

verely strained only since Mr. Gladstone's 
accession to the Premiership. That is 
probably a fact; but the pertinent ques- 
tion is, To what is the fact due? As late 
as Walpole's ministry the House of Lords 
was a more independent body than it has 
shown itself in late years. Its decay as 
an eflPective political institution had be- 
gun to set in, and was due in part to 
the determination of the Prime Minister 
to rely more upon the representative 
chamber for the real work of governing 
the country. The Lords, being generally 
Tories, naturally have little or no occa- 
sion for dissent with a Tory government, 
and the relative rights of the two cham- 
bers are not called in question. When 
measures of Whig ministers were not ac- 
ceptable to Tory lords, the Whigs gener- 
ally yielded, for they were patricians, and, 
with the exception of Lord John Rus- 
sell, had little sympathy with the people. 
With the Whigs the contest was between 
aristocracy and aristocracy; with Mr. 
Gladstone the contest has been between 
the aristocracy and the people, the classes 



142 William Ewart Gladstone. 

and the masses. The Whigs had little in 
common with democracy. Where they 
gave way, or were less inclined to aiitago- 
nize the upper House, he has been less 
yielding and accommodating. He has 
declined to say that ^'the legislative ac- 
tion of a majority of the House of Lords 
has, for the last fiftv vears, been a bene- 
fit or a blessing to the country." 

As the great Commoner, refusing the 
peerage and titles, Gladstone will not 
consent for the House to be humiliated 
or relegated to inferiority, or for gov- 
ernment measures to be ''doctored" or 
'^ cooked," by the peers, beyond recogni- 
tion. In his administrations the power 
of the House has suffered no diminution, 
l^ut has been rather increased. While re- 
specting the hereditary elements of the 
constitution and not at all averse to the 
inter-mixture of the hereditary principle 
in the House of Lords, '' as wholesome 
temperaments of the rashness of popular 
assemblies," ^^ethe has taught the Lords 
a wholesome lesson that they could not 
be allowed to defeat les^islation which the 



The House of Lords. 143 

country demanded. It has come now to 
be well settled that the will of the House 
of Commons is the true and authoritative 
expression of the national will. "In a 
representative country where issue has 
been deliberately joined, the representa- 
tive chamber ought to prevail and must 
prevail." 

In his address in 1885 to the electors 
of Midlothian, Mr. Gladstone said: ''As 
respects changes in the House of Lords, 
by far the best guarantee for the treat- 
ment of this important subject is one 
that can only be supplied by that House 
itself in the moderation and wisdom of 
its future conduct. Since 1832, it lias 
been continuously identified with the 
Tory party in the state, which has ob- 
tained the suffrage of the nation in only 
two out of twelve Parliaments; and few 
outside that party will maintain that the 
legislative action of the House of Lords 
has on the whole Vjeen satisfactory. It 
is likely that if its constitution remain 
unaltered, the ties of its present party 
connection will progressively be tight- 



144 William Ewart Gladstone. 

eiied rather than relaxed. I certainly 
cannot deny that there is a case sufficient 
to justify important change. Those who 
hold with Mr. Burke, as I do, that know- 
ledge and virtue alone have an intrinsic 
right to govern, might desire to consti- 
tute a second chamber strictly on this 
basis. But we cannot, in the nature of 
things, exclude other influences, espe- 
cially the permanent, growing and high- 
ly aggressive power of wealth. Among 
these secondary influences, as a link with 
the past, as a force congenial to the char- 
acter and habits of the people, and as a 
check on other and yet more mixed agen- 
cies, I hope, that in the reconstruction of 
the House of Peers, when it arrives, a rea- 
sonable share of power may be allowed, 
under wise conditions, to the principle 
of birth." 

Of the 474 peerages, 128 pre-existed 
George III; 173 Avere created from his 
accession until that of Victoria; and 173 
during the present reign. Pitt, in the 
course of his administration, bestowed 
no fewer than 115 titles, including new 



The House of Lords. 1 45 

creations and elevations from one rank 
to another. It would be easy to show 
by citation of measures and votes, that, 
since the beginning of the present cen- 
turyj the Peers, temporal and spiritual, 
have set a steady face against civil and 
religious reforms. As confirming the 
trend of the caste to Toryism, it may be 
stated that within recent 3^ears thirty-five 
Liberal peers have become Tories, while 
only four Tories have become Liberal. 
Besides a rental from land of £12,838,504, 
the peers, including Princes of the Blood, 
are possessed of 3,884 church livings and 
receive as pay, in the public service or 
otherwise, £750,000 per annum. Out of 
474 peers, 334 are in one way or another 
in the receipt of public emoluments, and 
6,821 of their relatives, from grandmoth- 
ers to third cousins, are quartered on the 
public treasury. 



10 



CHAPTER X. 

The Irish question has long been the 
vexata quxstio in English politics. To 
simplify or condense it is not easy. It 
has wide and complex and numerous re- 
lations. It has been ihejpons asinorum of 
ministries. It is protean in shapes. It 
ramifies indefinitely. Ireland is a para- 
dox. It is claimed that the rules and mo- 
tives applicable to other peoples cannot 
be adjusted to the Irish. The North and 
the South do not harmonize. Catholics 
and Protestants are like alien races, and 
develop into Fenians and Orangemen. 
Landlord and tenant have been irrecon- 
cilable enemies. Hates and antipathies 
rather than friendships and agreements 
have dominated. Loyalty, law and or- 
der, intelligible terms, have been misap- 
plied. Loyalty to the sovereign and im- 
perial patriotism have been the excep- 
tions. Secret leagues have taken the 
place of open political warfare. White- 

[146] 



The Irish Question. 147 

boyism, Levellers, Steelboys, Threshers, 
Ribbonism, etc., have designated factions 
and lawlessness. Assassination, boycot- 
ting, proscription, absenteeism, govern- 
mental distrust, oppressive discrimina- 
tions, coercion, shadowing, have been va- 
rying aspects of the mobile kaleidoscope. 
Religious, educational, social, economic, 
industrial, political questions have clam- 
ored for settlement. Times and oppor- 
tunities, propitious and promising, have 
brought forth Dead-sea fruits. Suspicion 
has marked all alliances and unions. 
Combinations and coalitions have dis- 
solved without bringing victory. Chan- 
ges have been rapid and sudden. Fines, 
imprisonments, banishments, have wid- 
ened the estrangement. Emigrants, vol- 
untary or forced, have carried with them 
hostility to England, and even when 
naturalized in the United States have 
been rather Irishmen than citizens of 
their adopted country. Elections in the 
United States, extradition treaties, dip- 
lomatic nominations and confirmations, 
have been influenced, if not controlled, by 



148 William. Ewart Gladstone. 

the Irish element, and by the inquiry, 
How much is the cause in Ireland to be 
affected by such an action or such a man ? 
Such extravagant demands have some- 
times been made, or so impudently and 
unreasonably pressed, that the ardor of 
those who may have concurred in the 
general policy has been sensibly abated. 
The Marquis of Salisbury, speaking in 
the House of Lords on the approval of the 
report of the Parnell commission, said: 
" The conduct of the Parnellites ought to 
frighten the country from admitting the 
possibility of ever confiding to them the 
rule of Ireland. Here were men whose 
political objects were S3^stematically pur- 
sued by means leading to outrage and 
murder." Two months later, taking cre- 
dit for his government, he said: ^'Social 
relations are easier, contracts are better 
kept, the process of setting class against 
class has become less profitable, and 3^et 
political convalescence will not come un- 
til the ordinary fidelity to a pledged word 
becomes more common. He was indif- 
ferent as to votes of Irish members, as 



The Irish Question. 149 

they will go against Englaiul till the 
grandson of the youngest living man has 
descended into his grave." 

Besides the intrinsic difficulties in the 
way of adjusting the Irish problem, the 
intemperance of the language of the Brit- 
ish Premier shows that others more for- 
midable have arisen from tradition, from 
racial or national prejudice, from a long 
course of governmental despotism, from 
the conservatism which resents change 
even when its justice and right are dem- 
onstrated, from the unwillingness to con- 
fess personal or national wrong-doing, 
and from the tenacity with which in- 
justice holds on to its ill-gotten gains. 
Abuses, the most flagrant, always find 
able and adroit supporters. Privileges, 
vested rights, oppressions embodied in 
statutes and prescription, ensconce them- 
selves behind precedent and usage. How 
hard it has been to overthrow religious 
persecution! An establishment, an al- 
liance of church and state, clings to legal 
sanctions and hoary wrongs, with not an 
inch-breadth of justice or scripture as a 
foundation. 



150 William Ewart Gladstone. 

Mr. Gladstone has had full experience 
of varying Irish moods and of the per- 
petual and difficult crises which Ireland 
presents to her best friends. He has had 
alternately the support and the opposi- 
tion of the Irish and the hostility and the 
friendship of Parnell and other leaders. 
In 1881 he condemned Parnell as pro- 
claiming a new and enlarged gospel of 
plunder; in 1890 he praises Parnell as a 
wise leader, demanding what England 
ought to be in haste to concede, and in 
1891 he conve3^ed to the Irish members 
his belief that the continuance of Mr. 
Parnell in the leadership was no longer 
compatible with the success of home rule 
in the constituencies of Great Britain. 
In his administration as Premier, at one 
time he is constrained by severe laws to 
enforce the maintenance of ^Hhose rights 
of property and of the public peace which 
are inseparable from the first ideas of 
freedom, and without which no nation is 
either worthy to possess freedom or capa- 
ble of enjoying its blessings;" at an- 
other time he denounces the action of the 



The Irish Question. 151 

police in Ireland in wantonly, ruthlessly 
and wickedly shooting down people law- 
fully assembled for public discussion, and 
affirmed that Russia, if remonstrated with 
by the British Government for shoot- 
ing down subjects in Siberia without 
trial and without justice, might find some 
ground for retaliation and retort by point- 
ing to Ireland. 

Delighting in the actual work and busi- 
ness of government, getting into his mind, 
as by intuition, the details of the most 
intricate and complicated legislation, it 
is not surprising that he should have, as 
he once admitted, a whole catalogue of 
unfinished work for parliamentary ac- 
tion. Among these questions none has 
enlisted more of his sympathies and en- 
ergies than the cause of Ireland with its 
manifold sufferings. The Irish people, 
such is the testimony of Cardinal Man- 
ning, ''have been afflicted by every kind 
of sorrow, barbarous and refined — all that 
centuries of warfare of race against race 
and religion against religion can inflict 
upon a people has been their inherit- 



152 William Ewart Gladstone. 

ance."^ Without attempting to unravel 
the complicated web, it may suffice to 
present the existing status of affairs and 
Mr. Gladstone's relations to the problems 
which are demanding solution. The Vice- 
President of the Irish Land League, Jus- 
tin McCarthy, said that Mr. Gladstone 
was the first English minister to deal on 
a liberal scale with the perplexing Irish 
question, and was the first who ever really 
periled office and popularity to serve the 
interests of the unhappy country. No 
English cabinets have ever been more 
kindly disposed to that restless land than 
those presided over by Mr. Gladstone, 
and yet none have, at times, encountered 
more adverse criticism, more obstinate 
demands, more persistent discontent and 
more partisan opposition. 

Feeling that Ireland had real griev- 
ances in the law of agricultural occupa- 

*Lecky, in the last volume of his History, says: 
" There is no fact in modern history more memorable 
than the contrast between the complete success with 
which England has governed her great Eastern Em- 
pire, with more than 200,000,000 inhabitants, and her 
signal failure in governing a neighboring island, which 
contains at most about 3,000,000 disaffected subjects. '^ 



Land Tenure. 153 

tion, he undertook to remedy, in 1870, 
an evil of a terribly practical character 
by the first act which gave any protec- 
tion to the Irish tenant. The bold at- 
tempt was denounced as revolutionary, 
and provoked the hatred of the landed 
class. It should be remembered that Ire- 
land is an agricultural country with an 
area of 20,000,000 acres, a population of 
about five millions, and 12,000 land own- 
ers; 1,942 persons own two-thirds of the 
land, 744 own nearly one-half, and 600,000 
are tenants, mostly mere tenants at will. 
This tenancy at will has bred idleness, 
poverty, discontent and crime. The land- 
lordism had a trinity of evils — first, a 
very unequal division of the proprietor- 
ship of the soil; secondly, a scheme of 
tenancy, short and at will; and thirdly, 
absenteeism, which meant that the land- 
lord let his estate to a middleman and 
left the tenant to the tender mercies of 
that middleman, or he left the manage- 
ment of his estate, with no intervening 
middleman, to an agent, he himself liv- 
ing abroad, knowing nothing of the con- 



154 William Ewart Gladstone. 

dition of his people, and performing none 
of those kindly offices which are regarded 
as necessary duties in the position of a 
hmdlord. For years hind tenure has been 
the subject of parliamentary inquiry and 
discussion. Lord Palmerston declared 
that tenant right was landlord's wrong, 
and he expressed the current creed of 
Tory and Whig statesmanship. Some 
philosophers hold that property has its 
duties as well as its rights, or, stronger 
still, that property ought to have no rights 
inconsistent with the general welfare of 
the people. Gladstone antagonized the 
doctrine of the landlord's absolute and 
unlimited right and conceded a limited 
ownership on the part of the tenant in 
the land which he had reclaimed by his 
labor and cultivated for generations. The 
time of Parliament in 1881 and 1882 was 
a^lmost entirely occupied with Irish af- 
fairs. A great conspiracy against social 
order, breaking up well-nigh the founda- 
tions of public law, prevailed; but Parlia- 
ment passed the Irish Land Bill of 1881, 
giving to the tenant adequate compensa- 



La7id Tenure. 155 

tioii for improvements and for the loss of 
his holding in case of unjust, unreason- 
able or capricious eviction. Froude, no 
friend of Mr. Gladstone, as late as Decem- 
ber 16, 1890, says it was ''an extremely 
necessary and good act, the best that had 
ever been passed for Ireland." It upset 
the fundamental principles on which 
British legislators had previously dealt 
with land tenure in Ireland, induced the 
people, for the first time, to place confi- 
dence in the courts of justice, and started 
in the direction of harmony between the 
people and the law. It made an ad- 
vanced step in satisfying the demands of 
the Irish people, and went far in check- 
ing the abuses and wholesale evictions of 
former days. Lord Derby, as early as 
1845, in the Peel government, favored 
compensations for improvements, but 
proprietary and class influences defeated 
him. Now, both parties and all govern- 
ments accept and act on the principle. 

The famine revealed the weak points of 
the Land Act, brought into prominence 
the discontent of the Irish farmer, gave 



156 William Ewart Gladstone. 

Occasion for increased activity and bold- 
ness on the part of malcontents and con- 
spirators, and necessitated remedial leg- 
islation. Gladstone brought in a bill, the 
salient features of which were free sale 
of tenant rights, fair rents and fixity of 
tenure. Free sale meant that a tenant 
might sell his holding to any purchaser 
against whom no serious objection could 
be substantiated. By fair rents was 
meant rents settled in absence of agree- 
ment by competent authority, with a 
power to either party to require revision 
at stated periods. Fixity of tenure would 
make the tenant free from all danger of 
sudden or unreasonable eviction. Par- 
nell, then in the opposition, commended 
the spirit and purpose of the grand meas- 
ure, Avhich was not born of fear or of re- 
venge, but of wise counsel and a patriotic 
effort to meet a stern exigency. 

In the year 1886, the government, with 
a view to a rapid and easy settlement of 
the land question, proposed to sanction 
the use of British credit for the purpose 
of facilitating the transfer of Irish estates 



Land Tenure. 157 

from the owners to the occupiers, so that 
they might become proprietors. The re- 
payment of what was to be advanced was 
certain and unattended with any political 
difficulty. Its real object was the final 
settlement of a long standing political 
quarrel between Great Britain and Ire- 
land, and the contingent demand upon 
the treasury was one which under other 
circumstances would have been wholly 
unjustifiable. The plan was condemned. 
The verdict of the country, at the subse- 
quent election, was that it was not safe 
nor allowable to make use of British 
credit to expedite the purchase of Irish 
estates. In the election of 1886 the Tories 
made an emphatic pledge against a re- 
course to British credit for buying out 
Irish landlords. They denounced, in ve- 
hement and unrestrained language, the 
employment of imperial credit, but in 
1890 they have introduced the Irish Land 
Purchase bill, employing a sum not ex- 
actly ascertained but exceeding £30,000,- 
000, enabling the landlords, in addition 
to the power of selling in the open mar- 



158 William Ewart Gladstone. 

ket, which they have in common with 
other landlords, to sell when they cannot 
find a purchaser by means of the power- 
ful instrument which the credit of the 
British treasur^^ places in their hands. 
Practically the effect would be to make 
the tax-payers of Great Britain the land- 
lords of Ireland. 

The gravamen of the Irish demand is 
self-government, the making and admin- 
istration of their own local laws while 
they shall still share in the legislation 
Avhich governs and consolidates the em- 
pire. Any one responsible for the con- 
duct of affairs in 1886 was bound to face 
the constitutional demand which had 
then, for the first time, been promul- 
gated b}^ the people of Ireland. To that 
demand there was the answer of resist- 
ance and coercion, and coercion has been 
enacted in violation of former parliamen- 
tary usages b}^ the frequent and rigid en- 
forcement of an instrument called ''the 
closure," not ''as a necessary and fugi- 
tive remedy for the disturbances of the 
country, but as a part of the permanent 



Home Rule. 159 

and perpetual law." In its nature and 
in its object the coercion is unprece- 
dented and odious, because instead of 
being aimed at crime it is '' aimed at re- 
straining and punishing the legitimate 
combinations of the people to secure what 
they want by the only means belonging 
to the condition of their country and 
such as is secured in England by trades 
unions and societies." 

There was also the answer of a reason- 
able attempt in accordance with the prin- 
ciples of equality and justice to satisfy 
the demand. Mr. Gladstone had the 
courage to consider and face the demand 
of the Irish nation, which had learned 
'Ho adopt the methods of constitutional 
and parliamentary proceedings instead 
of the method of irregular and illegal 
acts." He had come to the solemn con- 
clusion, after a long trial of a contrary 
policy had proved unavailing, that a new 
and juster policy must be inaugurated 
for Ireland. Having removed two of the 
greatest grievances — disestablishing an 
alien church and reforming the land 



160 William Ewart Gladstone. 

laws — there remained a question more 
important than both these two, as said 
Mr. Chamberlain on 3d June, 1885, and 
that was to give the widest possible self- 
government to Ireland which is consist- 
ent with the maintenance of the integrity 
of the empire. That system of home 
rule Morley has well described as " the 
very system under which the kinsmen of 
ours across the sea, with all their energy, 
their self-reliance, their confidence, their 
hope, are founding new and mighty states 
in which the English tongue, English 
freedom, English institutions prevail, and 
which are bound to the mother country 
by ties of kinship and of affection, which 
are, as a great man said one hundred 
3^ears ago, ties that though light as air 
are stronger than iron.' " 

After the election of 1885, Mr. Glad- 
stone, through Mr. Balfour, promised his 
suj)port to the Conservative leaders if, as 
seemed probable from Lord Salisbury's 
speeches and the alliance with the Par- 
nellites, they would endeavor to give to 
the Irish wider powers of autonomy. 



Home Rule. 161 

The proposal was not accepted, and when 
shortly afterwards the government was 
defeated on the allotment question, Glad- 
stone resumed the premiership, and it 
Avas authoritatively announced that he 
was preparing a Home Rule bilL Then 
came tlie secession of the Whigs and a 
compact body of radicals under the lead- 
ership of Hartington, Bright and Cham- 
berlain from the Liberal party. The pres- 
ent Salisbury administration succeeded, 
losing the Irish, but having the eager sup- 
port of the dissentients, and local self- 
government seems a vanishing quantity, 
unless the next Parliament shall have a 
majority of Liberals. 

Home rule has been much misrepre- 
sented, and Gladstone has been fiercelv 
assailed for his willingness to sever the 
empire by making Ireland independent. 
His proposal is imperial unity with local 
autonomy — the establishment by author- 
ity of Parliament of a domestic legisla- 
ture for the control of Irish affairs, both 
legislative and administrative, under the 
conditions whieli may be ])rescribed by 
11 



162 William Ewart Gladstone. 

the act defining Irisli as distinct from 
imperial affairs. There is contemplated 
only one sovereign — one ultimate execu- 
tive and legislative head and no breach 
of union. The statutorv Parliament in 
Ireland is to have, under proper regula- 
tions, such extended local government as 
may remove practical grievances attend- 
ant upon centralized administration, and 
enlarge municipal powers, and accustom 
to management of internal affairs. Mr. 
Chamberlain once forcibly said that cen- 
tralization ^Hhrows upon the English 
Parliament and English officials the duty 
and burden of supervising every petty 
detail of Irish local affairs, stifles the 
national life, destroys the sense of re- 
sponsibility, keeps the people in igno- 
rance of the duties and functions of gov- 
ernment, produces a perpetual feeling of 
irritation, while it obstructs all neces- 
sary legislation." From the cognizance of 
this legislative body Mr. Gladstone would 
withdraw everything that relates to the 
crown, all that belongs to the army and 
navy, and the entire subject of foreign 



Home Rule. 163 

and colonial relations. The acknowleda- 
ment of local independence wonld lead 
to a stronger and closer nnion. The re- 
liance should be less upon merely written 
stipulations and more upon those stipula- 
tions which are written on the heart and 
mind of man. The peroration of the 
speech on moving for leave to introduce 
a bill for the better government of Ire- 
land is an epitome of his philosophy of 
politics. ^'I ask that we should apply to 
Ireland that happy experience which we 
have gained in England and in Scotland, 
where the course of generations has now 
taught us, not as a dream or a theory, 
but as practice and as life, that the best 
and surest foundation we can find to 
build upon is the foundation afforded by 
the affections and the convictions and the 
will of the nation, and it is thus by the 
decree of the Almighty that we may be 
enabled to secure at once the social peace, 
the fame, the power and the permanence 
of the empire." Absurd as is the accu- 
sation that he favors a dismemberment 
of the empire, a quotation may be made 



164 William Evmrt Gladstone. 

to illustrate the exalted sentiments of his 
campaign utterances: '^I am very glad 
that in your address you . have thought 
proper to say that our special purpose, at 
the present moment, is that we are en- 
gaged in a great effort for welding to- 
gether effectually and permanently the 
United Kingdom by doing justice to Ire- 
land. That is emphatically and most 
significantly true. Never cease to bear 
in mind, and never cease to assert, that 
we are the true unionists. It is absurd 
to talk of separation between England 
and Ireland. Neither the wisdom nor 
the folly of man is strong enough to sepa- 
rate these countries which the Almighty 
has joined together. On the real merits 
of the case we are the only unionists. I 
affirm that a union written upon parch- 
ment, or a union inscribed upon the 
statute book, is not a full union — is not a 
happy union. It is but a shred and patch, 
a figment of a union, unless it is written 
in the hearts of the people.-' 

To an American, local self-government, 
as opposed to centralization, is so ob- 



Home Rule. 165 

vious and has been so thoroughly vin- 
dicated in practical action that it is diffi- 
cult to comprehend the animus or char- 
acter of the opposition to it. In contra- 
distinction, says Judge Cooley, to those 
governments whose supervision and con- 
trol extend to all the objects of govern- 
ment within the territorial limits of the 
state, the American system is one of com- 
l^lete decentralization, the primary and 
vital idea of which is that local affairs 
shall be managed by local authorities and 
general affairs only by the central au- 
thority. Mr. Gladstone would gradually 
enlarge the principle. County councils 
have been already established, but in his 
opinion the measure is incomplete until 
district councils shall be appointed, and, 
if possible, parochial councils, acquainted 
with the circumstances of every parish 
and place in every division of the coun- 
try, without which the practical purposes 
of local self-government cannot really be 
obtained. 

Conspicuously favorable consequences 
have flowed from Gladstone's pacific pol- 



166 William Ewart Gladstone. 

icy and trust of the Irish people. In 1885 
Chamberlain said: ''It is little wonder 
that the Irish people should regard the 
castle (in Ireland synonymous with the 
government) as the embodiment of for- 
eign supremacy. The rulers of the castle 
are to them foreign in race or in sym- 
pathy, or in both. ^ ^ ^ If the object of 
the government were ^ ^ ^ to give em- 
phasis to the fact that the whole country 
is under the domination of an alien race, 
no system could be devised more likely 
to secure its object than that now in force 
in Ireland." The people having no part 
in the administration, no responsibility, 
it was natural that there should be dis- 
trust, alienation from the law and from 
the administration of justice. They got 
the idea that argument and reason and 
common sense were not to be applied in 
matters where they were concerned, and 
that justice could be had only by violence 
or physical power. Now despair is turned 
into hope and hatred into friendship. • 

A late address of a Land League says: 
^' Under the forms of so-called consti- 



Home Rule. 167 

tutional government our nation now is 
subjected to unexampled oppression and 
unparalleled injustice ; but galling as this 
treatment is, we bear it with the certain 
hope that in the distant future your pol- 
icy of justice and conciliation will pre- 
vail, supported as it is by an overwhelm- 
ing majority of our countrymen at home 
and abroad, as well as by a vast and in- 
creasing proportion of our fellow-subjects 
in Great Britain. And we hope and pray, 
sir, that you may be able to see realized, 
as one of the results of this policy, the 
true union between England and Ireland 
which the people of both countries so 
earnestly desire/' 

Mr. Parnell, at the banquet given by his 
colleagues on his forty-fourth birthday — 
29th June, 1890 — held this striking lan- 
guage: ^'That time has since come about 
when an English party, a great English 
party, under the distinguished leadership 
of Mr. Gladstone, has conceded to Ireland 
these rights, and has enabled us to enter 
into an honorable alliance, honorable and 
beneficial to our country, and honorable 



168 William Ewart Gladstone. 

to the great English party — an alliance 
which I venture to believe will last, and 
will yield permanent fruit in knitting to- 
gether Great Britain and Ireland in a 
true and real union and in a consolida- 
tion which will defy time. "^ ^ * We be- 
lieve that when the memory of bitter 
wrongs in the past has gone by and has 
been forgotten, when we have been al- 
lowed to help ourseh^es and to remove 
the bitter poverty and oppression which 
now weigh upon every Irish project and 
every Irish enterprise, our people, instead 
of being a danger to the empire, will be 
one of its strongest sources of defence. 
* ^ ^ We believe that our first duty is to 
our country, and we will devote ourselves 
to that duty, and we shall be rewarded 
by the knowledge that to us it has been 
given to take part in the solution, the 
satisfactory and permanent solution, of 
the great Irish question, and that we have 
helped to reconcile two kindred nations 
and to banish strife and perplexity from 
the path of a great empire. We shall 
look to that as our reward." 



Home Rule. 169 

Sir Charles Russell closes his great 
speech on the Parnell commission by ex- 
pressing his opinion as to the removal of 
baneful misconceptions of the actions, 
motives and aims of the Irish people and 
their leaders : ''It will soften ancient pre- 
judices; it will hasten the day of true 
union and of real reconciliation between 
the people of Ireland and the people of 
Great Britain, and with the advent of 
that union and reconciliation will be dis- 
pelled, and dispelled for ever, the cloud — 
the weighty cloud — that has long rested 
on the history of a noble race and dim- 
med the glory of a mighty empire." 

Patrick Ford has abandoned his policy 
of revenge against the English race and 
become an advocate of moral force me- 
thods. Davitt has ceased to labor for the 
independence of Ireland. Agrarian out- 
rages have lessened. The dominant feel- 
ing of vinclictiveness has been changed 
into one of friendly responsiveness to the 
altered views of the British people. In- 
stead of faction and alienation and con- 
spiracy there seems to be growing an 



170 William Ewart Gladstone. ; 

union of mutual good-will among the 
masses of Ireland and of Great Britain, 
and a promise of a vigorous nationality, 
combining for imperialism, for local gov- 
ernment, for settlement of the problems 
of labor and propert}^, for vindication of 
the inalienable rights of mankind. The 
words uttered in 1884 by Mr. Gladstone 
were wise and prophetic : ^' So long as you 
continue to pursue a course of justice and 
liberality towards Ireland, nothing can 
happen in Ireland which will abate the 
strength of this mighty empire — nothing 
which can seriously trouble its imperial 
action ; and under no circumstances can 
it happen that Ireland can be dissevered 
in her fate and her fortunes — and it would 
be the greatest misfortune for her if she 
could — from Great Britain." Garibaldi, 
talking to an English friend about the 
Irish question, said: ^'Try liberty. Lib- 
erty has never yet failed j^ou, and it will 
not do so with the Irish." John Bright 
once gave in advice to a young friend: 
'^ Whenever you are in doubt take the 
generous side." 



=«#* Parnell as a Leader. 171 

Prior to the adoption of the represent 
tative principle in 1830, the principle of 
coercion had a ready adoption in the 
House of Commons, and Conservative 
obstruction resisted demands of the peo- 
ple; but under Liberal ideas and leader- 
ship men are now learning that reform 
is preferable to revolution, and that pa- 
tience and pacification are better than 
pistol and powder. 

Since the foregoing was sent to the 
publisher an event of more dignity and 
importance than a mere episode has oc- 
curred, which has changed the status of 
Irish affairs and threatens a tedious, if 
not indefinite, postponement of what was 
on the threshold of early accomplish- 
ment. 

Charles Stewart Parnell, as the chosen 
leader of the Irish Parliamentary party, 
had shown marvelous tact and skill and 
ability for the delicate and arduous post. 
He created and then consolidated that 
party in the House of Commons. He 
carried through Parliament measures of 



y 



172 William Ewart Gladstone. ^ 

great importance to the Irish people. 
He contributed largely to the forming of 
an alliance between the Irish and a great 
English party, and as the result of that 
unprecedented alliance and the conse- 
quent influence of Mr. Gladstone, home 
rule was on the verge of victory. By 
parliamentary and constitutional action 
he drove back and disbanded '' the forces 
of dynamite and murder that had so long 
been the curse of Ireland," producing 
such distrust of the capacity of the peo- 
ple for safe and wise local government, 
diminished agrarian crime, schooled the 
people to exemplary patience under in- 
sults and oppressions and bad govern- 
ment, and taught them the difficult les- 
son of placing hope and confidence in 
Great Britain. He had proved his devo- 
tion to Irehind by suffering calumny and 
imprisonment and by passing success- 
fully through the ordeal of a powerful 
conspiracy, in which the Times, backed 
by at least the sympath}^, if not the sup- 
port, of the government, had sought by 
forged letters to crush him and his cause. 



The Parnell-G' Shea Scandal. 173 

In course of time, one Mr. O'Sliea 
brought suit for divorce against his wife, 
and made Parnell co-respondent. The 
testimony in the case, clear and uncon- 
tradicted, showed criminal relations be- 
tween Parnell and the w^oman, persevered 
in schemingly with falsehood and fraud, 
that left the court no option but to de- 
cree a divorce for adulterv. This revel a- 
tion and judicial exposure, not merely of 
adultery, but of deliberate, continuous 
conduct impossible to an honorable man, 
made it impossible for Mr. Gladstone, 
with the high value he attaches to the 
character of public men, to continue his 
intimate official and personal intercourse 
with one guilty, by self-confession, of the 
most disgraceful moral obliquities. In 
a letter, using the most respectful and 
reserved language, on what public duty 
made it an obligation to say, he begged 
Mr. Morley to make known, through Mr. 
McCarthy, the conclusion at which he 
had arrived: ''It was that, notwithstand- 
ing the splendid services rendered by 
Parnell to his country, his continuance 



174 William Eivart Gladstone. 

at present in the leadership would be pro- 
ductive of consequences disastrous in the 
highest degree to the cause of Ireland. I 
think I mav be warranted in asking; vou 
so far to expand the conclusions given 
above as to add that Parnell's continu- 
ance as leader would not only place many 
hearty and effective friends to the Irish 
cause in a position of great embarrass- 
ment, but would render my retention of 
the leadership of the Liberal party, based, 
as it has been, mainly upon the prosecu- 
tion of the Irish cause, almost a nullity.'^ 

In a postscript Mr. Gladstone felt con- 
strained to intimate the possibility of his 
retiring from the leadership of the Lib- 
eral party, as all probability of carr3dng 
home rule during his lifetime would have 
disappeared. 

The publication of this letter created 
an excitement in social life and in poli- 
tics which convulsed the countrv. It is 
creditable to England that the tone, spirit 
and substance of the letter exalted Mr. 
Gladstone in the public estimation. The 
letter was apparently equivalent to his 



The Parnell-O'Shea Scandal. 175 

death warrant, to the overthrow of all his 
cherished plans, to the defeat of the mea- 
sures for which he had lived and labored. 
Men and women of both parties, with 
rare exceptions, were unstinted in the 
commendation of a man whose moral 
convictions dominated party exigencies, 
and who had rather be right than Prime 
Minister. 

Mr. Parnell, at the first, treated the 
letter with silence, gave no explanation 
nor apology, refused to retire from the 
leadership, but diligently sought a re- 
newal and confirmation of his power. 
However, some days afterwards, he is- 
sued a manifesto to the Irish people. It 
was written with much ingenuity and 
ability, and made a breach of confidence 
which renders it impossible for any self- 
respecting statesman hereafter to hold 
confidential relations with him. Even 
the Times says: '^The manifesto shivers 
forever the supposition that Mr. Parnell 
can ever again be treated as a trustworthy 
friend or an honorable foe. It is proba- 
bly the most shameless document Eng- 



176 William Ewart Gladstone. 

lish public life has seen since the days of 
the revolution." In its blind, reckless 
ambition it does irreparable injury to 
Ireland in furnishing a point to the gibe 
that the English people, having seen what 
manner of men the Parnellites are, will 
never trust them with the government 
of Ireland. Mr. ParnelFs unsupported 
statements, so far as they reflected on 
Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Morley, received 
prompt and emphatic denial: ''The Irish 
as well as the British public has a right 
to know whether I admit or deny the 
accuracy of that recital, and in regard to 
every one of the four points stated by 
Mr. Parnell I at once deny it." Mr. Mor- 
ley was equalty explicit in his contradic- 
tion. 

A schism in the Irish Nationalists has 
occurred. By a large majority of the 
Irish members of the House of Commons 
Mr. Justin McCarthy lias been chosen 
leader. Parnell insists on his right, and 
Avitli much courage has appealed to the 
Irish people. The fierce struggle for the 
supremacv is as yet unsettled. To an 



Reply to Irish Parliamentary Party. 177 

overture of the Irish Parliamentary party 
Mr. Gladstone made a reply, which is in- 
serted as historic material and as con- 
taining the only basis for the co-operation 
of the Liberal party: 

1 Carlton-gardens, Dec. S, 1890. 

Gentlemen: I have the honor to acknow- 
ledge the receipt of your letter transmitting 
to me two resolutions of the Irish Parliamen- 
tary party. 

By the first of these resolutions the subject 
of our correspondence is entirely detached 
from connection with the conversation at 
Hawarden. 

In the second I am requested to receive a 
deputation which, besides stating the views 
of the party, is to request an intimation of 
my intentions and those of my colleagues as 
to certain details connected with the subject 
of the settlement of the Irish land question 
and with the control of the Irish constabu- 
lary force in the event of the establishment 
of an Irish Legislature. 

As your letter reached me during the 'earlj^ 
hours of the sitting of the House, I have had 
the opportunity of learningHhe views of my 
12 



178 William Ewart Gladstone. 

colleagues with regard to such a declaration 
of intention on two out of the many points 
which may be regarded as vital to the con- 
struction of a good measure of home rule. I 
may be permitted to remind you, as I men- 
tioned to the deputation this morning, that 
the question raised by the publication of my 
letter to Mr. Morley was a question of leader- 
ship, and that it is separate from, and has no 
proper connection with, the subject of home 
rule. I have arrived at the conclusion that I 
cannot undertake to make any statement of 
our intentions on these or any other provi- 
sions of a Home Rule bill in connection with a 
question of the leadership of the Irish party. 
When the Irish party shall have disposed of 
this question, which belongs entirely to their 
own competence, in such a manner as will 
enable me to renew the former relations, it 
will be my desire to enter without prejudice 
into confidential communication such as has 
heretofore taken place, as occasion may serve, 
upon all amendment of particulars and sug- 
gestion of improvements in any plan for a 
measure of home rule. 

I may venture to assure you that no change 
has taken place in my desire to press forward 



Reply to Irish Parliamentary Party. 179 

on the first favorable opportunity a just and 
effective measure of home rule. I recognize 
and earnestly seek to uphold the independ- 
ence of the Irish Parliamentary party no less 
than that of the Liberal party. I acknow- 
ledge with satisfaction the harmony which 
since 1886 has prevailed between them, and 
when the present difficulty is removed I am 
aware of no reason to anticipate its interrup- 
tion. From what has taken ]3lace on both 
sides of the channel in the last four years, I 
look forward with confidence, as do my col- 
leagues, to the formation and prosecution of 
a measure which, in meeting all the just 
claims of Ireland, will likewise obtain the 
approval of the people of Great Britain. 

I shall at all suitable times prize the privi- 
lege of free communication with the Irish 
National party. And I will finally remind 
you of my declaration this morning that, apart 
from personal confidence, there is but one 
guarantee which can be of real value to Ire- 
land. It is that recently pointed out by Sir 
Wm. Harcourt in his letter of December 2d, 
when he called attention to '' the unquestion- 
able political fact that no party and no lead- 
ers could ever propose or hope to carry any 



180 William Ewart Gladstone. 

scheme of home rule which had not the cor- 
dial concurrence and the support of the Irish 
nation as declared by their representatives in 
Parliament." 

Since November Mr. Gladstone has 
persistently refused to have any dealings 
with Mr. Parnell or to acknowledge him 
in any way. Mr. McCarthy, having com- 
municated with him with special refer- 
ence to the settlement of the Irish land 
question and the final control of the Irish 
police, received assurances as to what the 
Liberal party would regard it as their 
duty to do, and he reported: '^It would 
be obviously inconsistent with the con- 
cessions of home rule to Ireland that the 
power to deal with the laws relating to 
land in Ireland should be permanently 
confined to the imperial Parliament— to 
the exclusion of the Irish Legislature. 
The land question must therefore either 
be settled by the imperial Parliament 
simultaneously with the establishment of 
home rule or within a limited period 
thereafter to be specified in the Home 
Eule Bill, or the power to deal w4th it 



Attitude of the Liberal Party. 181 

must be committed to the Irish Legisla- 
ture." To the question of police, the 
report stated that ^^Mr. Gladstone ex- 
pressly said, in introducing the Home 
Eule Bill in 1886, that he and his col- 
leagues had no desire to exempt the po- 
lice of Ireland in its final form from ulti- 
mate control of the Irish legislative body. 
The complete organization of the civil 
force by the Irish Government in order 
to take the place of the present armed 
and semi-military police ought not to re- 
quire more than a moderate amount of 
time, say five years or less. During that 
interval the present armed police, under 
the control of the Lord Lieutenant, would 
undergo a rapid reduction or a transfor- 
mation (subject, of course, to a strict ob- 
servance of all the engagements made by 
the imperial government with the Royal 
Irish Constabulary), and would, on the 
completion of the arrangement for a civil 
police, finally disappear." 

The letters of Mr. Gladstone best il- 
lustrate the man. While saving the Lib- 
eral party, they show that he is too con- 



182 William Eivart Gladstone. 

scientious and devoted to the right to 
allow party exigencies to dominate mo- 
ral convictions. They are specimens of 
^^magnanimous and delicate veracity/' 
while marked by courageous and frank 
avowals as to wishes and purpose. 



CHAPTER XI. 

Like his celebrated rival, Mr. Gladstone 
has been a writer of books and a frequent 
contributor to magazines and reviews. So 
wide are his reading and sympathies, such 
the variety and plenitude of his intel- 
lectual powers and acquisitions, that his 
writings are numerous and inclusive of 
a great range of topics. Subjects — his- 
torical, political, ecclesiastical, religious^ 
artistic, economic, literary and practical, 
have engaged his prolific pen. Some 
books have owed their reputation or cir- 
culation to his commendation of them. 
When he was serving as Lord High Com- 
missioner to arrange the cession of the 
Ionian Islands, at a banquet in Athens 
he addressed the assembly in the ancient 
Greek language, and because of his flu- 
ency, pronunciation and accent was de- 
clared a great Greek orator. The ability 
to accomplish this intellectual feat was 
the result, in some degree, of his Homeric 

[183] 



184 William Ewart Gladstone. 

studies. For many years he has applied 
himself to the study of HomLer. It is his 
recreation, his passion, and his mind is 
saturated with the spirit, and his memory 
is filled with the images and the lan- 
guage, of the Homeric poems. He may 
not be a Greek scholar of the verbal 
nicety and critical accuracy of some pro- 
fessors who have given their lives to the 
grammar of the language, but his Studies 
on Homer, Juventus Mundi, Homeric Syn- 
chronism, and various contributions to 
the reviews, show a profound acquaint- 
ance with the histor}^, the thought, the 
atmosphere of the period. 

In the course of this study frequent 
reference has been made to, and several 
quotations taken from, Church and State 
and Gleanings of Past Years. No writ- 
ings have been more read, or have pro- 
voked more bitter comment, than those 
in which he discussed Vaticanism. His 
high churchism, and his strenuous and 
successful efforts for the disestablishment 
of the Anglican Church in Ireland, and 
his courageous purpose to mete out fullest 



Writings on Vaticanism. 185 

justice to Roman Catholics, have caused 
Mr. Gladstone to be charged with drift- 
ing toward the Church of Rome, and even 
with being a pervert to that faith. In 
some respects that ecclesiastical organi- 
zation has had no more persistent nor 
able opponent. Pius IX, resolving to 
crown his long pontificate by the for- 
mal assumption, under the sanction of 
the collective episcopate of his church, 
of semi-divine attributes, summoned, in 
1870, a council to Rome, which assented 
to his wishes, and decreed papal infalli- 
bility. 

In 1874 the public mind in England 
was much, aroused by ritualistic prac- 
tices in some of the churches of the es- 
tablishment, by the aggressive activity of 
the Roman Church, and by the appre- 
hension of an organized and powerful 
influence for Romanizing Great Brit- 
ain. This awakened much controversy 
on church power and papal power. Mr. 
Gladstone, in an article in Contemporary 
Review on ritualism, used this language: 
'^At no time since the sanguinary reign 



186 William Eicart Gladstone. 

of Mary has such a scheme been possible 
[Romanizing the church and people of 
England]. But if it had been possible in 
the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, 
it would still have become impossible in 
the nineteenth, when Rome has substi- 
tuted for the proud boast of semper eadem 
a policy of violence and change in faith; 
when she has refurbished and paraded 
anew every rusty tool she was fondly 
thought to have disused; when no one 
can become her convert without renounc- 
ing his moral and mental freedom, and 
placing his civil loyalt}^ and duty at the 
mercy of another; and when she has 
equally repudiated modern thought and 
ancient history " This courageous at- 
tack created much excitement and dis- 
cussion. During the ecclesiastical war- 
fare which prevailed, he defended his 
position by a pamphlet on The Vatican 
Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegi- 
ance: a Political Expostulation, In restat- 
ing the four distinct propositions included 
in the foregoing extract, he proceeded to 
their demonstration with thorough fa- 



Writings on Vaticanism. 187 

miliarity with ecclesiastical history, with 
great boldness, with most careful polemi- 
cal fairness, but with inexpugnable logic. 
His contention was that the design of 
Vaticanism was to disturb civil society 
and to proceed, when requisite and prac- 
ticable, to the issue of blood for the ac- 
complishment of its aims; that the hier- 
archical power aimed, internally, at the 
total destruction of right, not of right as 
opposed to wrong, but of right as opposed 
to arbitrary will, and, externally, it main- 
tained the right and duty of the organized 
spirituality to override at will, in respect 
of right and wrong, the entire action of 
the civil power, and likewise to employ 
force, as and when it may think fit, for 
the fulfillment of its purposes, and thus 
to establish " absolutism of the church 
and absolutism in the church." The 
Pope claimed to determine, by spiritual 
prerogative, questions of the civil sphere, 
and thus those who. acknowledge his au- 
thority forfeit mental and moral freedom 
and place loyalty and civil duty in his 
hands. ^'Absolute obedience, it is de- 



188 William Ewart Gladstone. 

clared, is due to the Pope at the peril of 
salvation, not alone in faith, in morals, 
but in all things which concern the dis- 
cipline and government of the church." 
^^Duty is a power which rises with us in 
the morning, goes to rest with us at 
night. It is co-extensive with the action 
of our intelligence." Mr. Gladstone thus 
summed up his conclusions: 

^'1. That the Pope, authorized by his 
council, claims for himself the domain 
(a) of faith, (6) of morals, and (c) of all 
that concerns the discipline and govern- 
ment of the church. 

'^ 2. That he, in like manner, claims 
the power of determining the limits of 
those domains. 

" 3. That he does not sever them, by any 
acknowledged or intelligible line, from 
the domains of civil duty and allegiance. 

"4. That he therefore claims, and 
claims from the month of July, 1870, on- 
wards, with plenary authority, from every 
convert and member of his church that 
he shall place his loyalty and civil duty 
at the mercy of himself." 



Essay on Ritualism. 189 

The angry discussion provoked by the 
essay on Ritualism, was quietude com- 
pared with the storm of wrath which the 
pamphlet evoked. The writer was fierce- 
ly and bitterly assailed in many tongues. 
Replies innumerable poured forth from 
the press in Europe and the United States. 
Besides anonymous and editorial stric- 
tures, such antagonists as Cardinals New- 
man and Manning, Monsignor Capel, 
Bishops Ullathorne, Clifford, Vaughn, 
etc., and hosts of others made replies. 
The little book was placed on the Index 
Lihrorwn Prohihitorum. The Due de De- 
cages, on behalf of the government of 
France, refused to allow the" free sale of 
the translation at the railway book-stalls, 
on the public highways and in the kiosks. 
The efforts to restrain the circulation 
only increased the desire of the public 
to read. In the course of a few weeks 
120,000 copies were sold in England. 
The circulation in this country was im- 
mense, and translations were made into 
all the European languages. An Answer 
to Reproofs and Replies shows marvelous 



190 William Ewart Gladstone. 

dialectical skill and self-control. A Re- 
view of the Speeches of Pope Pius IX is 
one of the most trenchant and indignant 
exposures of papal assumptions to be 
found in our language. The three pa- 
pers make Vol. 1524 of the Tauchnitz 
Collection of British Authors. 



CHAPTER XII. 

Mr. Gladstone never divorces morals 
and politics, the civil and the ethical. 
In public life he is distinguished by 
moral earnestness, scrupulous conscien- 
tiousness, exaltation of character, absti- 
nence from chicanery or mere expedien- 
cy, and by bringing to the discussion of 
all questions of government the highest 
ethical principles. What he calls ^Hhe 
rare, noble, imperial virtue of justice " 
seems to be his pole star. ^^It is our de- 
sire to be just, but to be just we must be 
just to all. The oppression of a majority 
is detestable and odious ; the oppression 
of a minority is only by one degree less 
odious and detestable." It is not in ab- 
stract virtues, nor mere ethical excellent 
cies, nor simply in frankness of speech, 
ingenuousness of action, moral sensibil- 
ity, or generous charity, that he has de- 
monstrated their compatibility with civic 
greatness, but, like Hale and Wilberforce 

[191] 



192 William Ewart Gladstone. 

and Shaftesbury, he is decidedly and con- 
sistently a religious man. He accepts 
Christianity not simply as an intellectual 
creed, but as a personal belief, operative 
on human conduct, vitalizing motive, 
imposing obligations, offering rewards. 
The moral and spiritual elements may 
be said to dominate in his life. He 
writes on religious themes ; he constructs 
apologies for the inspiration of the Scrip- 
tures' and the evidences of Christianity, 
breaks a lance with infidels and agnos- 
tics, lectures on the righteousness which 
is by faith in Jesus Christ, and reads the 
service in his church at Hawarden. He 
is emphatically a churchman, perhaps a 
high churchman, and his sectarianism 
has obviously been a formidable barrier 
in hindering him from following his po- 
litical principles to their logical conse- 
quences. High churchism is 'per se and 
concededly exclusive, intolerant of dif- 
ferences, and yet, in spite of early editca- 
tion and ecclesiastical convictions and 
environments, Mr. Gladstone has suc- 
ceeded, in no small degree, in breaking 



Position on Ecclesiastical Reforms. 193 

the bonds which fettered him, and has 
gone very far in the assertion of religious 
freedom. The high view he took and 
maintained of the duties and privileges 
of the Established Church and the claims 
he has made for Anglicanism naturally 
awaken surprise that he has, on many 
questions, acted with non-conformists. 
It is a marvel that with his convictions 
and opinions he should have gone so 
far ; it is a greater marvel that he should 
hesitate to follow his action to legitimate, 
inevitable results. 

In England, religious and political re- 
forms have gone along pari passu, and 
have been retroactive and reproductive. 
With electoral reform, extension of suf- 
frage and enlargement of popular rights 
and liberties, have come demands for the 
removal of restraints upon the free exer- 
cise of religion, the abolition' of offensive 
ecclesiastical discriminations, and the 
equality of all churches or denomina- 
tions before the law. Mr. Gladstone, as 
a member and especially as the leader of 
the Liberal party, has favored, and some- 
13 



194 William Ewart Gladstone. 

times fathered, many of the various re- 
forms which in late years have illumi- 
nated the statutes of England. He came 
into public life after the repeal of the 
Test and Corporation Acts (1828) and the 
Catholic Emancipation Act (1829), but 
he sustained the Marriage and Registra- 
tion Acts, which permitted the celebra- 
tion of marriages and the registration of 
births, deaths and marriages elsewhere 
than in connection with the Established 
Church; the withdrawal of the Regium 
Donum, which left non-conformists free 
to protest with clean hands against the 
national endowments of religion; the ad- 
mission of Jews into Parliament; the re- 
moving the disabilities of clergymen who 
abandoned the clerical profession; Burial 
law reform, which authorized, both in 
church-yards and the consecrated por- 
tions of cemeteries, burial services other 
than those of the Established Church; 
the opening of the grammar schools, 
whereby children of all denominations 
were admitted to the endowed schools 
with liberty of withdrawing from the 



Position on Ecclesiastical Reforms. 195 

religious instruction, and others than 
members of the Church of Enghxnd Avere 
made capable of acting as trustees of the 
schools; the Qualification for Offices Act, 
which abolished the declaration on the 
part of municipal and other public offi- 
cers which had been substituted for the 
previous sacramental test; the Official 
Attendance at Place of Worship Act, 
which allowed office-holders to attend re- 
ligious worship other than that of the 
Established Church with insignia of 
office, without incurring forfeiture of 
office or penalty, and which opened the 
office of Lord Chancellor of Ireland to 
persons without reference to religious 
belief; the nationalization of the univer- 
sities, whereby scholarships, degrees, fel- 
lowships and headships were made eli- 
gible to persons of merit without regard 
to ecclesiastical distinctions, and, as has 
been explained, the disestablishment of 
the Irish Church. 

The tithe or church rate question has 
not yet been satisfactorily settled, and is 
not likely to cease to return to plague the 



196 William Ewart Gladstone. 

inventors until the church question of 
Avhich it is a part is settled. It is the es- 
tablishment which is the source of dis- 
content, inequality; and injustice. Tran- 
quillity cannot be secured, nor agitation 
suppressed, so long as one sect is obliged 
to pay tithes or rates for the support of 
the clergy of another sect, or so long as 
government claims the right to impose 
burdens on the people for the mainte- 
nance of a religion. An establishment 
is a mere human or legal institution, 
clearly separable from a church, and 
tithes are an arbitrary tax laid out in 
paying the wages of a particular class of 
servants. It is alleged that tithes are the 
property of the church, and that any in- 
terference with the right of the clergy to 
tithes is founded on a principle of rapine 
and spoliation. It might as well be 
claimed that taxes levied for the support 
of the army are the property of the sol- 
diers. The clergy of a state establish- 
ment stand on the same footing, are in 
the same predicament, as any other class 
of public functionaries. They are the 



Position on Ecclesiastical Reforms. 197 

servants of the state, paid for the dis- 
charge of certain prescribed duties. Mr. 
Gladstone, in his long public service, has 
necessarily had to meet this question, 
and he has, time and again, insisted on 
bringing the contentious matter to an 
end, on compromising the law of church 
rates, which was open to grave objection. 
In 1868 he brought in a measure, not 
prohibiting the making of a church rate 
— one of the avowed objects of the abo- 
lition of church rates being to get rid of 
the union of church and state — but pro- 
viding that no suit shall be instituted to 
compel the payment of any church rate 
made in any parish or place in England 
or Wales. 

A pending measure in Parliament is 
not for the abolition of tithes, but to 
change the mode of collection and, to 
some extent, to transfer the obligation 

from owner to occupier. The Tories sav 

-I. «/ 

the tithe is the property of the church 
and they ought to preserve it for the 
church. On the other hand, the Liberals 
say that, whether the church enjoys the 



198 William Ewart Gladstone. 

tithe by law or not, the ultimate right to 
the tithe is vested in the nation. Mr. 
Gladstone says the subject is a serious 
impediment in the way of rapid and 
easy progress with public business, and 
that the tithe ought not to be thrown 
away. Being national property it ought 
to be jealously guarded and preserved. 

All these measures are but steps to- 
wards the inevitable result. They are 
inconsequential, incomplete, excej^t as 
they tend to, prepare for, and hasten the 
grand consummation. Toleration having 
been secured, civil disabilities, or the ty- 
ranny of incapacitation, having been re- 
moved, there remains the demand, as 
logical and just as the attainment is 
sure, for religious equality and freedom, 
and this involves necessarily disestab- 
lishment of the church. To this ulti- 
mate point Mr. Gladstone has not com- 
mitted himself. From the positions as- 
sumed in his first published Avork, The 
State in its Relations with the Church, he 
has largely departed, but has not made 
up his mind, or at least not made known 



Position on Ecclesiastical Eeforms. 199 

his determination, to cross the Rubicon. 
In 1874 the Archbishop of Canterbury 
introduced the Public Worship Regula- 
tion Bill, so as to give the bishop larger 
directory power as to worship. The de- 
parture of many English clergymen for 
Rome, and the Romish practices intro- 
duced into many churches, had awak- 
ened a strong feeling against ritualism 
and popish practices, as they were called. 
The bill, passing the House of Lords, 
came down to the House of Commons, 
which seemed to be nearly unanimous in 
its desire to arrest the progress of ritual- 
ism. Mr. Gladstone, under much em- 
barrassment, felt constrained to point 
out what he considered a false issue and 
to dispel the illusions which the bill had 
raised. He objected that it interfered 
with liberty and with the variety of cus- 
toms which had grown up in different 
parts of the country, and he enlarged 
upon the inconveniences of enforcing 
strict uniformity, and maintained that 
variations from the rubric ought not to 
be interfered with. ^^For example, the 



200 William Ewart Gladstone. 

rubric required the catechising of chil- 
dren at the afternoon service ; it required 
the Athanasian creed to be read thirteen 
times in the year, and it was very doubt- 
ful Avhether the present hynmology of 
the church was in accordance with the 
rubric." 

In resolutions presented to the House 
as a wiser basis of legislation he insisted : 

'^1. That this House cannot do other- 
wise than take into view the lapse of 
more than two centuries since the enact- 
ment of the present rubrics of the Com- 
mon Prayer-Book of the Church of Eng- 
land ; the multitude of particulars em- 
braced in the conduct of divine service 
under their provisions ; the doubts occa- 
sionally attaching to their interpretation, 
and the number of paints they are thought 
to leave undecided; the diversities of lo- 
cal custom which under these circum- 
stances have long prevailed; and the 
unreasonableness of proscribing all vari- 
eties of opinion and usage among the 
many thousands of congregations- of the 
church distributed throughout the land. 



Position on Ecclesiastical Reforms. 201 

^'2. That this House is therefore re- 
luctant to place in the hands of every 
single bishop, on the motion of one or of 
three persons, however defined, greatly 
increased facilities towards procuring an 
absolute ruling of many points hitherto 
left open and reasonably allowing of 
diversity, and thereby towards the es- 
tablishment of an inflexible rule of uni- 
formity throughout the land, to the pre- 
judice, in matters indiflPerent, of the lib- 
erty now practically existing." 

Sir William Harcourt said of the speech 
which preceded the resolutions, that they 
had all been under the wand of the Great 
Enchanter as he poured forth the wealth 
of his incomparable eloquence, but the 
speech could only be described as a pow- 
erful plea for universal non-conformity, 
or optional conformity. In this speech 
of Gladstone's occurred the well-known 
tribute to the clergy, whose eloquence 
and justice will bear repetition : 

'' The House can do nothing without 
acknowledging how much we owe to the 
great mass of the clergy of the Church 



202 William Ewart Gladstone. 

of England for their zeal and devotion. 
For eighteen years I was a servant of a 
large body of them. My place is now 
most worthily occupied by another ; but 
I have not forgotten, and never can for- 
get, the many sacrifices they were always 
ready to make, and the real liberality of 
mind which upon a thousand occasions 
they have shown. But even that is a 
thing totally insignificant in comparison 
with the work which they are doing. 
You talk of the observance of the law. 
Why, sir, every day and night the cler- 
gyman of the Church of England, by 
the spirit he diffuses around him, by the 
lessons he imparts, lays the nation under 
a load of obligation to him. The eccen- 
tricities of a handful of men can never, 
therefore, make me forget the illustrious 
merit of the services done by the mass 
of the clergy in an age which is beyond 
all others luxurious and, I fear, selfish 
and worldly. These are the men who 
hold up to us a banner on which is writ- 
ten the motto of eternal life, and of the 
care for things unseen which must re- 



Position on Ecclesiastical Reforms. 203 

main the chief hope of man through all 
the vicissitudes of his mortal life." 

This was the earnest utterance of a 
sincere churchman. His defence of the 
church had in it something of the spirit 
which resented the laying of unholy 
hands on the ark of God, and yet he dis- 
criminates, not, however, on the highest 
principles by which the relations of the 
state to a church are to be determined, 
between a church, ^'the growth of the 
history and traditions of the country," 
and a legal or statutory establishment. 
In his speech on the Church Patronage of 
Scotland Bill, he emphatically declared: 
^^I am not an idolater of establishments." 
In his speech (1863) on the Dissenters' 
Burial Bill, he said it was an inconsist- 
ency and an anomaly, after having pro- 
perly granted to the entire Community 
the power of professing and practising 
what form of religion they pleased during 
life, to say to the relatives of the dead 
that they should not have the privilege 
of burying in a church-yard unless they 
appeared there as members of the Church 



204 William Ewart Gladstone. 

of England. As early as 1845, in his 
speech on the Maynooth Bill, he observed 
that exclusive support to the Established 
Church was a doctrine that was being 
more and more abandoned day by day. 
In his speech on the disestablishment of 
the Irish Church he held this language 
substantially: ''The idea of a national es- 
tablishment of religion, of a solemn ap- 
propriation of a part of the common- 
wealth for conferring upon all who are 
ready to receive it what we know to be 
an inestimable benefit — of saving that 
portion of the inheritance from private 
selfishness in order to extract from it, if 
we can, pure and unmixed advantages of 
the highest order for the population at 
large, is something so attractive that it 
must always command the homage of the 
many. The church establishment, in its 
theory and in its aim, is beautiful and 
attractive, and yet what is it but an ap- 
propriation of public property — an ap- 
propriation of the fruits of labor and of 
skill — to certain purposes? and unless 
these purposes are fulfilled that appro- 



Position on Ecclesiastical Reforms. 205 

priation cannot be justified." Twice by 
vote and speech he opposed Mr. Miall's 
motion for the disestablishment of the 
Church of England, which he affirmed 
''has been from a period shortly after the 
Christian era, and has never for 1,300 
years ceased to be, the church of the 
country, having been at every period in- 
grained with the hearts and the feelings 
of the great mass of the people.'' Mr. 
Gladstone holds an established church in 
a minority to be an anomaly, and is will- 
ing, when a decided majority declines to 
approve or tolerate, to heed their wishes. 
Hence he is willing to disestablish the 
church in Wales, and in a powerful 
speech on the 2d of May last in favor of 
the disestablishment and disendowment 
of the Scotch Church, rejected in the 
House of Commons by the narrow ma- 
jority of 38, he insisted that the burden 
of proof lay upon those who maintained 
the principle of an establishment. In 
giving a catalogue of possible pleas or rea- 
sons by which the maintenance of a re- 
ligious establishment might be defended, 



206 William Ewart Gladstone. 

he said: ^^An established church must be 
able, when its position is assailed, to 
show either that it is performing some 
special religious work Avhich no other 
body could perform, or that it testifies to 
truths which no other religious body 
could so effectually uphold, or that it is 
the church of the decided majority, or 
that it is the church which the majority, 
whether belonging to it or not, desire to 
maintain in the position of a national 
church." This speech elicited from the 
Lord Advocate the satirical remark that 
the right honorable gentleman had put 
an end to the long period of suspense, 
during which it had been thought possi- 
ble to keep the peace between Liberalism 
and good churchism, and that he had 
ended the period of balanced ambiguity 
and of cunningly-devised equivocation, 
and had taken a step which was irrevo- 
cable and irretrievable. 

On the question of allowing Brad- 
laugh, an atheist, to take his seat in the 
House of Commons on a mere affirma- 
tion which would bind liis conscience. 



Position on Ecclesiastical Reforms. 207 

Mr. Gladstone had his religious sensi- 
bilities and convictions brought into 
conflict with a sense of justice and a 
controlling constitutional principle. His 
speech on the Parliamentary Oaths Act 
Amendment Bill, April 26, 1883, is, per- 
haps, one of the clearest and fullest ex- 
positions he has made of the distinction 
between religion and civil government. 
A few extracts may well bring us near 
the conclusion of this chapter. '' The 
contention that there should be some 
recognition of the supernatural ^ ^ ^ 
violates civil freedom to this extent, that 
in the words of Lord Lyndhurst, there 
was to be a total divorce between the 
question of religious differences and the 
question of civil privilege and power; 
that there was to be no religious test, no 
test whatever, applied to a man with re- 
spect to the exercise of civil function, 
except the test of civil capacity and a 
fulfillment of civil conditions." " I am 
convinced that on every religious ground, 
as well as on every political ground, the 
true and wise course is not to deal out 



208 William Ewart Gladstone. 

religious liberty by halves, quarters and 
fractions, but to deal it out entire, and 
make no distinctions between man and 
man on the ground of religious difference 
from one end of the land to the other." 
^' Truth is the expression of the divine 
mind, and however little our feeble vision 
may be able to discern the means by 
w^hich God may provide for its preser- 
vation, we mav leave the matter in his 
hands, and we may be sure that a firm 
and courageous application of every prin- 
ciple of equity and of justice is the best 
method we can adopt for the preserva- 
tion and influence of truth." ''Great 
mischief has been done in many minds 
through the resistance offered to a man 
elected by the constituency of North- 
ampton, which a portion of the people 
believe to be unjust. Where they see 
the profession of religion and the inter- 
ests of religion ostensiblv associated with 
what they are deeply convinced is injus- 
tice, they are led to questions about re- 
ligion itself which they see to be asso- 
ciated with injustice. Unbelief attracts 



Position on Ecclesiastical Reforms. 209 

a sympathy which it would not other- 
wise enjoy, and the upshot is to impair 
those convictions and that religious faith, 
the loss of w^hich I believe to be the most 
inexpressible calamity which can fall 
either upon a man or a nation." 

On January 27th, the House of Com- 
mons, ifb one dissenting, expunged from 
the Journals the resolution passed June 
22, 1880, which refused to Bradlaugh the 
right of taking his seat by the duplicate 
procedure of declaring that he could nei- 
ther swear nor affirm. Mr. Gladstone 
spoke in favor of the action. 

On February 4th, Mr. Gladstone, for 
the third time in his life and the first 
time since he became Prime Minister, 
moved, as a private member, the second 
reading of a bill. What prompted this 
action was a desire to remove from the 
statutes ^' an anomaly, an injustice and 
a discredit — a law which discriminated 
against a creed in the bestowment of po- 
sitions of trust and emoluments. Roman 
Catholics are excluded from the offices of 
Lord Chancellor of Great Britain and 

14 



210 William Ewart Gladstone, 

Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Mr. Glad- 
stone would wipe from the laws the last 
'^ miserable shred and tatter " of proscrip- 
tion imposing civil disabilities on account 
of religious opinions. In a speech, con- 
ceded to be one of the most masterly he 
ever delivered, he declared causeless pro- 
scription to be persecution. The leader 
of the House of Commons and the Attor- 
ney-General joined in tributes to the 
great effort, but the government, in true 
reactionary consistency, having issued a 
five-line whip, defeated the measure of 
justice by a majority of thirty-three. 

On the 20th of February, Mr. Glad- 
stone spoke in favor of a proposition to 
disestablish the Church of England in 
Wales on the ground that the Established 
Church comprised a small body of the 
population, and that the non-conformists 
of Wales were the people of Wales and 
had spoken again and again in their 
judgment on the question. The resolu- 
tion was rejected by a very close divis- 
ion — so close as to give hope of early vic- 
tory to the friends of religious equality. 



The Liberal Party and Disestahlishment. 211 

The Liberal party comprises, in large 
degree, the non-conformists, with whom 
disestablishment is a cardinal principle, 
a measure involving their self-respect, 
their equality of rights and privileges as 
citizens of Great Britain, and, as they 
firmly hold, the only true interpretation 
of the New Testament. Their devotion 
to Mr. Gladstone has been extraordinary, 
their confidence in liis sincerity, integ- 
rity, patriotism, statesmanship, unlim- 
ited. Their fealty has been tested by 
patient sacrifices, for they have post- 
poned, at his bidding, a measure vital to 
them, rather than introduce a disturbing 
element and seemingly hinder his plans 
and purposes. In the distribution of of- 
fices, Mr. Gladstone has not favored dis- 
senters; in his episcopal appointments 
he has sorely tried them and the evan- 
gelicals. Since Lord Salisbury's entrance 
upon the office of Premier he has ap- 
pointed seven bishops simply because 
they were high churchmen. Not a sin- 
gle low churchman has he appointed. 
In Gladstone's earlier days he alienated 



212 William Ewart Gladstone. 

Protestants from the Liberal party, but 
in later years his ecclesiastical appoint- 
ments were more equitable, and he would 
now not be likely to make one-sided, par- 
tisan appointments. In charity com- 
missions, little or no provision for repre- 
sentation of non-conformist views and 
interests has been made. In the Irish 
Church disestablishment and other mea- 
sures, studied effort has been made to 
strip them of all encouragement to dis- 
senters. As Mr. Gladstone is a high 
churchman, those Avho understand what 
that means of antagonism to non-con- 
formity and dissent may form some idea 
of the loyalty which has never faltered 
in its support of the great commoner. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

By his frank utterances, expressive of 
his admiration of the people and the in- 
stitutions of the United States, he has 
provoked adverse criticism from a por- 
tion of the English press. He thinks 
the Senate of the United States " the 
most remarkable of all the inventions of 
modern politics/' and the American con- 
stitution ^Hhe most wonderful Avork ever 
struck off at a given time by the brain 
and purpose of man/' and that "its ex- 
emption from formal change, though not 
entire, has certainly proved the sagacity 
of its constructors and the stubborn 
strength of the fabric." In the same 
essay — Kin Beyond Sea — speaking of our 
future, he says, "She will probably be- 
come what we are now, the head servant 
in the great household of the world, the 
employer of all employed; because her 
service will be the most and the ablest." 
In 1856, when the relations between 

[213] 



214 William Ewart Gladstone. 

Great Britain and the United States be- 
came considerably strained, in an able 
speech may be found this sentence : ^' It 
appears to me that the two cardinal aims 
that we ought to keep in view in the dis- 
cussion of this question are peace and a 
thoroughly cordial understanding with 
America for one, the honor and fame 
of England for the other." In 1884, he 
wrote: ^'The convulsion of that country 
between 1861 and 1865 was perhaps the 
most frightful which ever assailed a na- 
tional existence. The efforts which were 
made on both sides were marked. The 
exertions by which alone the movement 
was put down were not only extraordi- 
nary; they were what antecedently would 
have been called impossible, and they 
were only rendered possible by the fact 
that they proceeded from a nation where 
every capable citizen was enfranchised 
and had a direct and an energetic interest 
in the well-being and the unity of the 
state." ''No hardier republicanism was 
generated in New England than in the 
slave States of the South, which pro- 



Letter to Mr. Smalley. 215 

duced so many of the great statesmen of 
America." In a conversation with Mr. 
Gladstone in 1887 he referred to the enor- 
mous power and responsibilities of the 
United States, and suggested that a de- 
sideratum was a new unity between our 
two countries. We had that of race and 
language, but we needed a moral unity 
of English-speaking people for the suc- 
cess of freedom. Italy loved freedom, 
and there were some lovers of it in 
France, but a moral unity of those using 
the same tongue would be most powerful 
for good. His letter to Mr. Smalley will 
best show his opinions and sentiments : 

10 Downing Street, Whitehall, 

October 4, 1884.. 

Dear Mr. Smalley : I was unwilling to 
answer your letter hastily, and I therefore 
postponed writing for two or three days, but 
I find this does not in any degree relieve me 
from my dilemma. The first point raised by 
you is, indeed, one that can be briefly dis- 
posed of. When I first read in detail the 
Life of Washington I was profoundly im- 
pressed with the moral elevation and great- 



216 William Ewart Gladstone. 

ness of liis character, and I found myself at 
a loss to name among the statesmen of any 
age or country many, or possibly any, who 
could be his rival. In saying this I mean no 
disparagement to the class of politicians, the 
men of my own craft and cloth, whom in my 
own land and my own experience I have 
found no less worthy than any other men of 
love and admiration. I could name among 
them those who seem to me to come near 
even to him. But I will shut out the last 
half century from the comparison. I will then 
say that if, among all the pedestals supplied 
by history for public characters of extraordi- 
nary nobility and purity, I saw one higher 
than all the rest, and if I were required at a 
moment's notice to name the fittest occupant 
for it, I think my choice, at any time during 
the last forty-five years, would have lighted, 
and it would now light, upon Washington. 
The other subject is one on which I hardly 
like to touch in a few lines; for the prospect it 
opens to me is as vast as it is diversified, and 
it is so interesting as to be almost overwhelm- 
ing. Mr. Barham Zincke, no incompetent 
calculator, reckons that the English-speaking 
peoples of the world an hundred years hence 
will probably count a thousand millions. 



Letter to Mr. Smalley. 217 

Some French author, whose name I unfortu- 
nately forget, in a recent estimate places them 
somewhat lower — at what precise figure I do 
not recollect, but it is like 600 or 800 millions. 
A century back I suppose they were not much, 
if at all, beyond fifteen millions ; I also sup- 
pose we may now take them at an hundred. 
These calculations are not so visionary as they 
may seem to some; they rest upon a rather 
wide induction, while the best thing they can 
pretend to is rough approximation. But, as 
I recollect, it was either Imlay, or one of 
those with whom the name of that creature 
is associated, that computed, a century back, 
the probable population of the American 
Union at this date, and placed it very nearly 
at the point where it now stands. What a 
prospect is that of very many hundreds of 
millions of people, certainly among the most 
manful and energetic in the world, occupy- 
ing one great continent — I may almost say 
two — and other islands and territories not 
easy to be counted, with these islands at their 
head, the most historic in the world; in con- 
tact, by a vast commerce, with all mankind, 
and perhaps still united in kindly political 
association with some more hundreds of mil 
lions fitted for no mean destiny; united al- 



218 William Ewart Gladstone. 

most absolutely in blood and language, and 
very largely in religion, laws, and institu- 
tions. If anticipations such as these are to 
be realized in any considerable degree, the 
prospect is at once majestic, inspiring, and 
consolatory. The subject is full of meaning, 
and of power — of so much meaning that the 
pupil of the eye requires time to let in such 
a flood of light. I shall not attempt, after 
thus sketching it, to expound it. It would 
be as absurd as if a box-keeper at a theatre, 
when letting in a party, should attempt to 
expound the piece. I hope that some person 
more competent and less engaged than my- 
self will give this subject the study it de- 
serves, taking his stand on the facts of the 
last century, and the promise, valeat quantum, 
of the coming one. I cannot but think as 
well as hope that a good understanding, in 
the future near and far, among English- 
speaking peoples, though it may not be mat- 
ter of certainty, yet is beyond the necessity 
of going a-begging, so to speak, for recom- 
mendations from any individual, earnestly 
and with my whole heart as I, for one, should 
recommend it. Clearly, if the English-speak- 
ing peoples shall then be anything like what 
we have now been supposing, and if there 



Letter to Mr. Smalley. 219 

shall not be a good understanding among 
them, there will have been a base desertion 
of an easy duty, a gran rifiuto, such as might 
stir another Dante to denounce it, a renunci- 
ation of the noblest, the most beneficial, the 
most peaceful primacy ever presented to the 
heart and understanding of man. On the 
other hand, great as it would be, it would de- 
mand no propaganda, no superlative inge- 
nuity or effort ; it ought to be an orderly and 
natural growth, requiring only that you 
should be reasonably true and loyal to your 
traditions, and we to ours. To gain it will 
need no preterhuman strength or wisdom ; 
to miss it will require some portentous de- 
generacy. Even were it a day dream it 
would be an improving one, loftier and better 
than that which prompted the verse 

' ' Super et Garamantas et Indos 
Proferet imperium ; jacet extra sidera telius, 
Extra anni solisque vias," 

because it implies no strife or bloodshed, and 
is full only of the moral elements of strength. 
Believe me very faithfully yours, 

W. E. Gladstone. 

The English or Anglo-Saxon race is 
essentially the same in its more distin- 



220 William Ewart Gladstone. 

guishing characteristics. Unity of lan- 
guage creates unity of thought, of litera- 
ture, and largely unity of civilization and 
of institutions. It facilitates social and 
comniercial intercourse, and must pro- 
duce still more marked political phenom- 
ena. We profit naturally by inventions, 
by discoveries, by constitutional strug- 
gles, by civil and religious achievements, 
by lessons of tradition^ by landmarks of 
usage and prescription. Magna Charta, 
Petition of Right, Habeas Corpus, what 
O'Connell even called the ^^ glorious Rev- 
olution of 1688," are as much American 
as English. England claims to have orig- 
inated the representative system six hun- 
dred years ago. Our ancestors brought 
to this soil, ^'singularly suited for their 
growth, all that was democratic in the 
policy of England and all that was Pro- 
testant in her religion." Our revolu- 
tion, like that of 1688, was in the main 
a vindication of liberties inherited. In 
freedom of religion, in local self-govern- 
ment, and somewhat in state autonomy, 
our forefathers constructed for them- 



Friendly Relationships. 221 

selves ; but nearly all the personal guar- 
antees, of which we so much boast on 
our national anniversaries, were borrowed 
from the mother country. 

On the 27th of July, 1866, the Atlantic 
cable was first laid between Great Britain 
and Ireland and the United States. The 
Queen congratulated the President upon 
the completion of the international work, 
and expressed the hope that the electric 
cable would prove an additional link 
between nations whose friendship was 
founded on their common interests and 
reciprocal esteem. Every true philan- 
thropist must re-echo the royal wish. 
Between a country whose annals are il- 
lustrated by the highest achievements of 
human genius, whose career is such a 
.cheering exhibition of the advance of 
human freedom and stable government, 
whose laws and literature are so much the 
same as ours — between such a country 
and people and ours there should be the 
most cordial alliance. The old notions 
of international enmity, looking upon 
foreign nations as hostile, are unworthy 



222 William Ewart Gladstone. 

of young and Christian America. To 
cultivate peace and concord and amity, 
co-operation and brotherhood, is our spe- 
cial duty. Both speak our noble English 
tongue in its freedom, its dignity, its 
massive simplicity, and have the richest, 
purest, most varied literature the world 
is blessed with. Both 'Holerate opinion, 
with only a reserve on behalf of decency, 
and desire to confine coercion to the pro- 
vince of action, and to leave thought, as 
such, entirely free"; both are guardians 
of trial by jury and of an unmolested 
home; both have the common law, an 
independent judiciary, universal educa- 
tion, equality of citizenship before the 
law, an unchained English Bible ; both 
are asylums for the oppressed, refuges 
for the weary. In both every citizen can 
aspire to the highest offices, royalty only 
excepted. Both whiten every sea with 
their flags, are daring, enterprising, ad- 
venturous ; both have carried Christian- 
ity to the uttermost ends of the earth ; 
both are set for the defence of a pure 
gospel and of the unshared authority of 



The English Government. 223 

the inspired Scriptures, and for the largest 
individual liberty compatible with the 
public good. No pedigree of royal house 
is co-eval with the English Government. 
Names, which carry us behind the me- 
diaeval ages and into the twilight of au- 
thentic secular history, were unknown 
when the foundations of the grand old 
structure were laid. Before Peter the 
Hermit preached his first unholy crusade 
for the recovery of Jerusalem, while the 
Saracens were in Spain, before our mod- 
ern English became a spoken or written 
tongue, before the invention of paper or 
movable types, before Columbus attempt- 
ed the perilous passage of the Atlantic, 
and when South Africa spread out on the 
maps an undefined continent ; long be- 
fore Luther resisted the sale of indul- 
gences, or the Bible had been translated 
into modern languages, the English Gov- 
ernment had its beginning; and far, far 
distant be the day when a New Zealan- 
der, from a broken arch of the London 
bridge, shall be sketching the ruins of 
Westminster. 



CHAPTER XrV. 

The greatest living champion of justice 
and right, of honor and freedom, of peace 
and good-will, the greatest commoner of 
the century, the Grand Old Man, does 
not owe his reputation, popularity and 
influence to adventitious circumstances. 
His is a unique personality which makes 
him the mightiest force in English poli- 
tics. Satirized, lampooned, caricatured, 
abused, hated, he is, nevertheless, the 
most popular man in the empire — re- 
spected, honored, admired, loved. Sir 
Charles Dilke, in 1886, speaking of this 
foremost English minister and states- 
man, said: ''Mr. Gladstone, I believe, is 
popular 'in this country at the present 
time as never minister was popular be- 
fore. He was popular as leader of the 
party on a former occasion, but his popu- 
larity, though great as compared with the 
popularity of other ministers, fell far 
short of the popularity enjoyed by him 

[224] 



Personal Characteristics. 225 

at the present time. The people of this 
country, amid all the vilification that has 
been heaped upon his head, recognize in 
that man the greatest orator and most 
illustrious genius who has ever served 
liis country, and they do not intend that 
any amount of vilification or abuse shall 
cause them to have anything but an en- 
hanced opinion of him." 

In January, 1875, he announced his 
retirement from the leadership of the 
Liberal party, as he needed slackened 
activity and physical repose. It soon 
became evident that he must resume his 
old position, for which there w^as no rival, 
nor could he, unless, with his surrender 
of leadership, he stripped himself of the 
popular devotion, of his knowledge, ex- 
perience, force of character and vast 
accomplishments. There is something 
apart from his vast and ready informa- 
tion, his versatility of intellect, his ad- 
ministrative genius, his entrancing elo- 
quence, which has given and enabled him 
to retain such a hold upon the popular 
mind and heart. The people love and 

15 



226 William Eivart Gladstone. 

follow because they have unquestioning 
and unstinted confidence in his sincerity 
and integrity, his want of self-seeking, 
his disinterestedness. No statesman ri- 
vals him in his capacity for awakening 
popular enthusiasm without appealing to 
passion or prejudice. He dares to array 
himself against the demands of the hour, 
to stand up, if alone, for the right and 
the just and the enduring, and yet the 
people cling because they admire his po- 
litical sagacity and trust his popular sym- 
pathies and unswerving rectitude. The 
adherence of non-conformists to him has 
been already cited as a political phenom- 
enon. The attachment of the middle 
classes is equally as remarkable. Schol- 
ars, scientists, authors, preachers, and 
not a few of the aristocracy, bear for 
him not merely party fealty, but strong 
personal affection. Indignation, satire, 
crushing ridicule, are at his command, 
but he never lets personal animosity or 
the injustice of his adversaries control his 
public conduct, nor betray him into abuse 
or the vulgar arts of the demagogue. Of- 



Personal Characteristics. 227 

fensive rudeness of enemies, abuse, con- 
tumelious insolence, vilification, resort 
to despicable modes of party or parlia- 
mentary warfare, never shake him from 
propriety, nor lessen the endearment 
which makes his public spirit and force 
of will the motive power in English af- 
fairs. Some one has said: ^'He moralizes 
finance and commerce and institutional- 
izes ethics and faith/' Recognizing the 
principle of brotherhood and of equal- 
ity and independence among nations, he 
uttered this rule of international law: 
^^When we are asking for the mainten- 
ance of the rights which belong to our 
fellow-subjects resident in Greece, let us 
clo^as we would be done by, and let us 
pay all the respect to a feeble state, and 
to the infancy of free institutions, which 
we should desire and should expect from 
others towards their maturity and their 
strength." ^ 

His exceptional ascendency is due to 
both mental and moral qualities. Earn- 
estness and veraciousness pervade his 
whole life; he loves the causes which he 



228 William Ewart Gladstone. 

espouses, and enters with heartiest sym- 
pathy into what will better the moral, 
social and industrial condition of the 
people. With keen sensitiveness he re- 
sponds to the emotions and interests of 
his fellow-countrymen. When the Queen 
offered him an earldom — the same rank 
as that to which his illustrious rival, Dis- 
raeli, was raised in 1876 — he declined to 
merge his name into an insignificant ter- 
ritorial title, preferring not to put himself 
out of sympathy with those from whom 
he gets his true patent of nobility. 

The derided phrase, ''The classes 
against the masses," was not a mere 
battle cry. It embodied a policy and a 
principle. Gladstone is a democratic 
statesman, and knows that the poorest 
can appreciate, and will be benefited by, 
traveling at a penny per mile, or sending 
for a penny a letter from one end of the 
country to the other. In 1861 his ene- 
mies charged him with laying new im- 
posts to burden the rich, and with reduc- 
ing duties for the exclusive benefit of the 
poor. In his first election address, in 



A Champion of the Poor. 229 

1832, occurs this language : '^ There should 
be a sedulous and special attention to the 
interests of the poor, founded upon the 
rule that those who are least able to take 
care of themselves should be most re- 
garded by others. Particularly it is a 
duty to endeavor, by every means, that 
labor may receive adequate remuneration , 
which, unhappily, among several classes 
of our fellow-countrymen is not now the 
case. Whatever measures, therefore — 
whether by correction of the Poor laws, 
allotment of cottage grounds or other- 
wise — tend to promote this object, I deem 
entitled to the warmest support.^' In the 
Neapolitan episode, it was oppressed hu- 
manity that enlisted his pen and influ- 
ence and called out the indignant pro- 
test and exposure. The charges had no 
connection with any separate object or 
interest of England, but appertained to 
individual and domestic happiness, to the 
maintenance of public order, ^^to the 
sphere of humanity at large." In the 
conversation held with him in 1887, al- 
ready adverted to, he gave this explana- 



230 William Ewart Gladstone. 

tion of his change to Liberalism, of his 
friendship for enlarged liberty: ^' Forty 
years ago I was ordered to Italy for my 
health. While there my attention was 
directed to the state of the prisons under 
Bomba. ^ In them I found noble patriots 
imprisoned without trial and for no other 
offence than dislike of the King's govern- 
ment I conversed with them, as far as 
I could made an impartial examination, 
and what I saw and heard opened my 
eyes and began my education of cosmo- 
politanism." In one of the annual bud- 
gets is this sentence: "Whatever taxes 
we remove, we will not impose more du- 
ties upon the tea and sugar, which are 
consumed by every laboring man." The 
Post-office Savings Bank Bill he intro- 
duced in 1861 to give increased facilities 
for the deposit of small savings. The 
several thousand post-offices would be 
open every day in the week and for ten 
hours each day, and depositors have in- 
creased from 178,495 in 1862 to 3,333,675 
in 1884. His law relating to the pur- 
chase of government annuities through 



Testimony of Contemporaries. 231 

the medium of savings banks, and to en- 
able the granting of life insurances by 
the government, was conceived in the in- 
terest of the working classes, has been 
singularly successful, and is generally 
acknowledged as a valuable legislative 
reform. The same is true of abolition of 
purchase in the army, opening offices to 
competitive examinations, reducing the 
price of bread, and establishing the sound 
economic principle of buying where you 
cmn buy cheapest and selling where you 
can sell highest. 

Because of these and other marvelous 
successes the thoughtfulest men of Eng- 
land have borne such concurrent testi- 
mony as is here adduced. John Stuart 
Mill said: " If there ever was a statesman 
in whom the spirit of improvement is in- 
carnate, of whose career as a minister the 
characteristic feature has been to seek 
out things which required or admitted of 
improvement, instead of waiting to be 
compelled or even solicited to do it, that 
honor belongs to the late Chancellor of 



232 William Ewart Gladstone. 

the Exchequer and leader of the House 
of Commons." 

On June 3, 1885, a not less competent 
witness, Mr. Chamberlain, said : '* But 
standing here as I do at the turning of 
the ways, I will venture to assert that 
when the history of the last five years 
comes to be written, neither the govern- 
ment, of which I have the honor to be a 
member, nor the Parliament which was 
returned to power with such tremendous 
enthusiasm five years ago will have any 
cause to fear its verdict. When that his- 
tory comes to be written, you know whose 
will be the central and the prominent 
figure. You know that Mr. Gladstone 
will stand out before posterity as the 
greatest man of his time — remarkable 
not only for his extraordinary eloquence, 
for his great ability, for his steadfastness 
of purpose, for his constructive skill, but 
more, perhaps, than all these, for his per- 
sonal character and for the high tone 
that he has introduced into our political 
and public life. I sometimes think that 
great men are like great mountains, and 



Testimony of Contemporaries. 233 

that we don't appreciate their magnitude 
while we are still close to them. You 
have to go to a distance to see which 
peak it is that towers above its fellows ; 
and it may be that we shall have to put 
between us and Mr. Gladstone a space of 
time before we shall know how much 
greater he h?.s been than any of his com- 
petitors for fame and power. I am cer- 
tain that justice will be done to him in 
the future, and I am not less certain that 
there will be a signal condemnation of 
the men who, moved by motives of party 
spite, in their eagerness for office, have 
not hesitated to load with insult and in- 
dignity the greatest statesman of our 
time; who have not allowed even his 
age, which should have commanded their 
reverence, or his experience, which enti- 
tles him to their respect, or his high per- 
sonal character, or his long services to his 
Queen and to his country, to shield him 
from the vulgar affronts and the lying 
accusations of which he has nightly been 
made the subject in the House of Com- 
mons. He, with his great magnanimity, 



234 William Ewart Gladstone, 

can afford to forget and forgive these 
things.'' 

John Morley, in a public speech at 
Rochdale, April 23, 1890, thus expressed 
his opinion : ^' They talk of their sacri- 
fices. Ah! what sacrifices has anybody 
made — of friends, of office — what sacri- 
fices compared with that which this vete- 
ran in public causes and in popularity 
has made? No, gentlemen, I said to you 
it had been my fortune to know . some 
great men, but the greatest man I have 
ever known is still alive." 

Mr. Froude, in his late biography of 
Lord Beaconsfield, tests his claims to 
greatness of the highest rank by observ- 
ing — first, that he has left behind him 
. nothing of permanent value to mankind; 
secondl}^, that he never forgot himself in 
his work ; and, thirdly, that his charac- 
ter was not quite an English character. 
Tried by these exacting tests, Mr. Glad- 
stone may be placed in the foremost 
rank. His whole career has been mark- 
ed by a self-forgetfulness in his labors 
for the mental, moral and social and po- 



Testimony of Contemporaries. 235 

litical elevation of the people ; by such 
thoroughness, as, despite his cosmopoli- 
tan sympathies, to make him, flesh and 
blood, mind and spirit, essentially Eng- 
lish ; and by leaving on nearly every 
page of the English statute-books for the 
last fifty years the enduring evidences 
of a beneficent statesmanship. 

To a high-born lady railing at Mr. 
Gladstone, John Bright suddenly turned 
and said : '' Has your son [he was stand- 
ing beside them] ever seen Mr. Glad- 
stone?" ^'No" was the surprised an- 
swer. ^'Then take him at once to see 
the greatest Englishman he is ever likely 
to look upon." 

The common opinion that old age 
makes men timid and conservative finds 
no verification in the case of Mr. Glad- 
stone. Each year finds him at its end 
bolder, more progressive, more radical, 
more trustful of the people, more confi- 
dent in the expediency of the just, the 
true and the right. While some men 
have their faith and hope and energies 
cramped or clouded as they grow old, 



236 William Ewart Gladstone. 

his political principles grow and expand 
with the "times. With more than fifty 
years of official experience, he is the 
leader of a party of progress, and looks 
with no disfavor or pessimism upon en- 
largement of popular rights or new tests 
of the power and virtue of representative 
institutions. With his conceded intel- 
lectual superiority, he is readily recep- 
tive of new ideas, open to the lessons of 
experience and the suggestions of com- 
mon sense — " equally free from regret for 
the past and dread of the future." 

His life has been full and active ; he 
has been no recluse, nor has he confined 
himself to politics. In every movement 
of his times he has been a participant, 
in social, religious, artistic, horticultural, 
scientific, archaeological, literary, philo- 
sophical, charitable. An untiring stu- 
dent, a rapid and omnivorous reader, a 
conscientious and painstaking investi- 
gator of every subject and question that 
may require from him consideration or 
action, he is approachable, affable, socia- 
ble, and has a large circle of acquaint- 



An Active Life. 237 

ances and friends. His extraordinary 
capacity for work is the result of indus- 
try, habit, health, method, economy, 
which takes care of the odds and ends 
of time. The instinct of order runs 
through all his work, and his system is 
so thorough that he gets the maximum 
of work out of his secretaries and co- 
laborers. His industry is unflagging. 
When he visited the Paris Exposition 
he saw everything, seemed to be doing 
nothing but enjoying himself, and yet 
found time to write a long article on 
Italy and the Triple Alliance. When 
he last went to Italy for quiet rest and 
recuperation, he found time for social en- 
gagements and speeches in Italian, ex- 
hausted two large trunkfuls of books he 
carried from England, wrote a review of 
an Italian book and a magazine article, 
before he returned. 

His memory and power of acquisition 
are prodigious, and he speaks and writes 
with fluencv. As an orator, he is more 
accomplished than as a writer. His voice 
is clear, rich, flexible, sonorous and at his 



238 William Ewart Gladstone. 

command. He thinks on his legs,has a 
rare faculty of adaptedness to his audi- 
ence^ abounds in felicitous illustration, 
rarely indulges in humor, pours out in 
exhaustless abundance long sentences, 
and sometimes when thoroughly aroused 
rises to lofty eloquence and bears onward 
his auditory by a resistless flood. His 
vacations he generally spends with his 
family at Hawarden, near Chester, where 
he entertains much company. A friend, 
several times his guest, informs me that 
he opens his letters and catalogues his 
correspondence for himself at an early 
hour. Near nine o'clock, accompanied 
by his wife, he attends morning worship 
at the church, sometimes reading the 
service; about ten, breakfasts, lingering 
at the table and talking for an hour; then 
repairs to his library, leaving it only for 
luncheon; later in the afternoon he walks 
for an hour, and happy is the person who 
shares with him this exercise. Return- 
ing, he lays aside coat and waistcoat and 
uses his axe in felling a tree or cutting 
up one previously felled; thence to din- 



Private Life. 239 

ner, and afterwards to drawing-room un- 
til about eleven, Avhen he retires, and he 
has the gift to sleep at will and sleep 
soundly. He is an accomplished player 
on the piano, is fond of Scotch airs and 
ballad music, and after exciting debate 
or heavy official duties returns home and 
solaces his overtaxed brain by playing 
such music as secures repose and com- 
fort. 



2508 



,...v. 




